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‘What sweeter music’: issues in choral church
music c.1960 to 2017, with special reference to
the Christmas Eve carol service at King’s
College Chapel, Cambridge, and its new
commissions
Rowan Clare Williams
MA by Research
University of York
Music
May 2019
2
Abstract
During the course of the 20th century, the choir of King’s College, Cambridge came to be seen as the epitome of English sacred choral singing. Its annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, established in 1918 and broadcast since 1928, attracts a global audience. The carol was originally a popular genre which was not primarily intended for liturgical use, but which interacted with and commented on the sacred in an accessible way before becoming a fully accepted part of the church repertoire . The association between carols and King’s therefore illustrates two contrasting approaches to music in worship: one concentrated on the pursuit of excellence, often perceived as elitist or exclusive, and a more ‘utilitarian’ approach focused on participation. Both these approaches will be examined using King’s as a lens.
King’s also illustrates the steady increase in standards and expectations of church music since the nineteenth century. Various factors in the evolution of the ‘King’s sound’ will be examined, including the increased emphasis on professionalism in cathedral and collegiate choirs, the establishment of a choir school, cultural expectations surrounding the treble voice, and the availability of recordings and broadcasts as a benchmark to evaluate performance.
Every year since 1983, the service has included a commission from a leading composer, including several not necessarily normally associated with church music. The intention behind the commissions was to ensure that the established tradition of the carol service did not become fossilised, but remains in dialogue with the best of secular composition. It also demonstrates that interesting and innovative composers are willing to write for the Anglican liturgy, regardless of their own religious affiliation. This will entail a discussion of other recent commissioning initiatives in church music, such as the Merton Choirbook and Choirbook for the Queen. Finally, I shall examine the King’s commissions and their contribution to the wider choral repertoire. If the most successful commissions are those which adhere closely to the carol format, there are implications for the debate about style and purpose in church music which King’s epitomises.
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List of Contents
Abstract page 2
Table of Contents page 3
List of Musical Examples and note on pitch notation page 6
List of Sound Files (on separate CD) page 7
Acknowledgements page 8
Declaration page 9
Introduction page 10
Chapter One: The purpose of music in worship: some debates and issues
page 20
1.1 Music in worship: purpose and context
1.2 Sacred, liturgical or church music: some possible definitions
1.3 ‘Why is church music so bad?’: excellence and elitism
1.4 Art versus vernacular music: utilitarianism and aesthetics
1.5 Stylistic conservatism and the King’s commissions
Chapter Two: The development of the ‘King’s sound’ and the
professionalisation of church music page 42
2.1 The origins of the King’s sound
2.2 The treble voice and its cultural implications
2.3 Not ‘all ooh wooh’: alternative treble sounds
2.4 Sacred music and adult choral sound
4
2.5 The role of recording and broadcasting
2.6 Professionalisation and perfectionism in church music
Chapter Three: The history of the carol and its use in worship page 67
3.1 What is a carol?
3.2 What is a carol service?
3.3 Truro and the origins of Nine Lessons and Carols
3.4 The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s
3.5 Carols from King’s: an unattainable ideal?
Chapter Four: Some issues in composing and commissioning new music for
the church page 96
4.1 Composing for the liturgy: process, context and word-setting
4.2 James MacMillan: faith in composition
4.3 Choirbook for the Queen
4.4 The Merton Choirbook
4.5 Commissioning at York Minster since 2008
Chapter Five: Continuing the tradition: the King’s commissions since 1983
page 120
5.1 The process of commissioning: intention and practicalities
5.2 Issues affecting absorption into the repertoire
5.3 After the first performance: what happens to commissions?
5.4 Carols for today
Conclusion page 142
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Appendix 1: The King’s College Choir carol commissions 1983-2016
page 146
Appendix 2: Composers of King’s commissions represented in Choirbook for the
Queen page 165
Appendix 3: Composers of King’s commissions represented in Merton
Choirbook page 167
Appendix 4: Outline of mediaeval order of Matins page 168
Bibliography page 169
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List of Musical Examples
Fig. 1: Te Deum, HRH the Prince Consort, bars 21-24: page 29
Fig. 2: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Misere’ Nobis (2006) , bars 22-25: page 40
Fig. 3: Descant to O come all ye faithful, bars 1-4: page 92
Fig. 4: Rautavaara, Offerings they brought of gold (2010), bars 4-7: page 130
Fig. 5: Rutti, organ part to De Virgine Maria (2014), bars 53-7: page 131
Fig. 6: Swayne, flute part to Winter Solstice Carol (1998), bar 46: page 131
Fig. 7: Holloway, Christmas Carol (2002), tenor solo, bars 91-3: page 132
Fig. 8: Dean, Here comes the dawn (2007), bars 28-32: page 134
Note: King’s carol commissions are listed in the text with their year of first
performance in brackets.
Pitch notation is given using the Helmholtz system (below):
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List of Sound Files mentioned in the text (refer to enclosed CD)
Chapter 2: The King’s sound and the professionalisation of church music
1. Magnificat in G, C.V. Stanford (King’s College Choir/Ord 1955), solo treble Richard White
2. Up good Christen folk from Christmas at St John’s (St John’s College Choir/Guest 1974)
3. Magnificat in C, George Thalben-Ball (Temple Church Choir/Thalben-Ball 1961), solo
treble Robin Lough (EMI Treasury of English Church Music volume 4)
4. Collects from Even You Song, Cheryl Frances-Hoad (Peterborough Cathedral Choir/Grahl
2016)
5. Miserere, Gregorio Allegri (Tallis Scholars/Phillips 1980), solo treble Alison Stamp
Chapter 3: The history of the carol
6. Once again O blessed time (Truro Cathedral Choir/Gray 2015)
7. O come all ye faithful without descant (King’s College Choir/ Ord 1954)
8. O come all ye faithful- transitional descant (King’s College Choir/Willcocks 1958)
9. O come all ye faithful- complete descant (King’s College Choir/Willcocks 1963)
Chapter 5: The King’s commissions
10. Winter Solstice Carol, Giles Swayne (King’s College Choir/Cleobury, On Christmas Day CD
1 track 15)
11. The Gleam, Harrison Birtwistle (On Christmas Day CD 2 track 2)
12. Carol of St Steven, Alexander Goehr (On Christmas Day CD 1 track 13)
13. Illuminare Jerusalem, Judith Weir (On Christmas Day CD 1 track 11)
14. The Flight, Richard Causton (OUP Choral Highlights 2016 track 17)
15. This Endernight, Michael Berkeley (OUP Christmas Choral Highlights 2017 track 9)
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the following people, who have generously shared their
expertise in various ways, and who have given their permission where relevant
to be quoted in the text:
Dr Stephen Cleobury, Director of Music, King’s College, Cambridge
Steven Grahl, Director of Music, Peterborough Cathedral
Christopher Gray, Director of Music, Truro Cathedral
Timothy Hone, Cathedral Organists’ Association
Sir James MacMillan, composer
Dr Patricia McGuire, Archivist, King’s College, Cambridge
Revd. Canon Peter Moger, Precentor, York Minster
Benjamin Nicholas, Director of Music, Merton College, Oxford
Michael Nicholas, formerly Director of Music, Norwich Cathedral
Robert Sharpe, Director of Music, York Minster
Professor Jonathan Wainwright, University of York
Rt. Revd. Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester
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DECLARATION
I declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole
author.
This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any
other, University.
All sources are acknowledged as References.
Rowan Clare Williams
University of York
May 2019.
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Introduction
During the course of the 20th century, the choir of King’s College, Cambridge
came to be seen as the epitome of English choral singing. Its annual Festival of
Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, established in 1918 and broadcast
annually on radio since 1928, attracts a global audience; the televised version,
first broadcast in 1954 as a truncated version of the Christmas Eve service
containing six out of the nine readings, takes a para-liturgical form including
non-biblical readings and a slightly different selection of music.
Every serious treatment of English choral music references King’s College
Choir; either as a model to emulate, or as something to react against. Timothy
Day begins his 2018 study of the influence of King’s on English choral sound by
asking ‘why did they sing like that?’1 Day goes on to explore how the sound of
this one choir became the defining representative of English choral music as a
whole, when it is actually not typical even of choirs whose main purpose is to
sing the Anglican liturgy, let alone of the whole breadth of the choral
repertoire. The development of the ‘King’s sound’ and its elevation to
exemplary status, despite the existence of several other possible models, help
us to define and discuss a tradition which has developed in many directions
beyond what that choir does.
This was initially intended as a study of the contribution which the Festival of
Nine Lessons and Carols has made to the repertoire of Anglican choral music,
especially through the annual commissioning of a new carol from leading
composers since 1983. It proved impossible to study the Festival in isolation
from the rest of the tradition, both musical and liturgical, which gave rise to it.
For it is not just the sound that is atypical: when the Festival of Nine Lessons
and Carols was devised, it was deliberately intended to be different from the
1 Day (2018), xviii.
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Anglican liturgy then available. So we need not only to ask why and how the
sound of King’s College Choir has become emblematic of the whole of Anglican
choral music: we also need to explore how this discrete annual act of worship
is identified as the epitome of its work, instead of the day-in-day-out singing of
the office in chapel for which it was formed. For this reason, after exploring
the evolution of the sound, we shall go on to examine the development of the
carol service as a contribution to the relationship between liturgy and music,
before proceeding to an exploration of some other examples of contemporary
commissioning of choral music for worship.
Because of its consistent catalogue of recordings and broadcasts, King’s has
had a unique opportunity to shape perceptions of what ‘church music’ should,
and did, sound like. Furthermore, the King’s carol service has done more than
any other single liturgical event to shape expectations about standards and
styles of choral performance, both within and beyond the liturgy. These
expectations, however unrealistic, are still being worked through by other
choirs, both sacred and secular: perceptions and assumptions about how
Anglican choirs in particular should sound are formed in relationship to the
‘sound of King’s’; whether they emulate the King’s soundworld, or consciously
react against it, the dominant presence of King’s across a range of media has
contributed to the construction of an ideal against which other choirs are still
measured.2
Yet to discuss the sound which is considered appropriate for music in the
liturgy requires an initial discussion of the purpose of music in worship. 3 There
is disagreement among scholars as to what constitutes ‘church music’, and
2 Day’s full-length study (2018) on the evolution of the English choral sound as epitomised by King’s was published after the original version of this thesis was submitted. I am grateful for the opportunity to take on board his argument, which has contributed a great deal to the final form of chapter 2 below. 3 The debate about what kind of music is ‘fitting’ or ‘unsuitable’ for ecclesiastical use is first articulated in the Archbishops’ Commission report of 1922. Subsequent reports, in 1948 and 1992, have modified the absolute judgements of 1922, but the debate still lingers on, often in the guise of discussions about taste and stylistic preference.
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how it relates to the rest of the classical repertoire in terms of both stylistic
and technical development. There is not space in the current study to do full
justice to these questions, but some contrasting approaches, notably that of
Martin Thomas, will be examined in chapter 1. Albeit problematic in a number
of ways, notably his approach to issues of utility, style and taste in church
music, Thomas’ work raises the serious point that church musicians themselves
may have contributed to the gradual marginalisation of their field through their
adherence to stylistic conservatism. At the same time, standards in choral
singing generally have risen over the last hundred years, and there is no doubt
that the increased expectations created have had a considerable impact even
on amateur choirs. Yet the pursuit of excellence, because it is also linked with
issues of taste and perception, can also lead to accusations of an elitism which
may be considered inappropriate for music which is intended for use in
worship.
According to Routley, Parry and Stanford were the first composers since the
Reformation to write music for the church which was of the same quality as
what they wrote for the concert hall.4 Until that point, church music was not
considered a ‘serious’ branch of music, and looked backwards rather than
forwards in its idioms. Perhaps this is one reason why church music as a genre
has not received the same amount of serious attention from academic
musicologists as other branches of the classical canon. Apart from Thomas,
whose approach is somewhat controversial, this has resulted in a relative lack
of recent academic scholarship from which to take an objective overview.
Gant’s popular history of church music, O Sing unto the Lord (2015) is both
thorough and engaging, but it is not written for a specialist audience, and lacks
exhaustive references to some of the material he cites. Before Gant, the most
thorough overview of the subject was that of Long (1971). Despite a wide
4 Routley (1964), 18-19, criticises the ‘cult of amateurism’ in church music up to that point.
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reach, some of his views and assumptions have not stood the test of time. In
particular, he treats choral music and music for the liturgy as if they are
coterminous: if this was ever true, it is certainly no longer.
Day’s work, based on extensive knowledge of recorded music throughout the
twentieth century, constitutes the most exhaustive recent examination of the
Anglican choral tradition in general and King’s in particular, and will be
examined more thoroughly in chapter 2. It explores how King’s became a
paradigm of the Anglican choral tradition through the unusually wide
dissemination of its sound via recordings and broadcasts, of which the Nine
Lessons and Carols is the most popular. Day’s work shows how King’s became
identified with the development of a ‘pure’, vibrato-less tone, most distinctively
in the treble line, which was then adopted by other choirs. Not all of the
commissions include solo writing, but of those that do, the majority are for
treble. For that reason, the components of the King’s sound, and the treble in
particular, will be analysed in detail here as evidence for the wide influence of
the sound of King’s, before turning to an examination of its influence over the
choral repertoire, particularly in the development of the carol genre.
Recordings made under successive Directors of Music throughout the last
hundred years not only create an objective benchmark from which to evaluate
performance standards. They also make it possible to acknowledge that
although the ‘King’s sound’ is recognised as a byword for a particular
performance style, that sound has itself undergone various alterations over the
years. Changes in tempi and diction, plus a vast increase in repertoire in
languages other than English and a broader range of composers from beyond
Anglicanism, can all be mapped through the availability of King’s broadcast
recordings over a very long period, and on a scale which few other choirs can
match. Other factors, including increased rehearsal time, the establishment of a
choir school, individual singing tuition for both boys and men, and the tendency
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to recruit younger choral scholars in the back row in place of lay clerks, have
all had an impact on ensemble which is now mirrored across the cathedral and
collegiate sector, not merely at King’s itself. These changes have not only
improved performance standards across the sector: they have also resulted in
an increased confidence in tackling more demanding music, which has in turn
inspired less able choirs to broaden their own approach to repertoire. So the
evolution of the Anglican choral tradition generally is observable in microcosm
through recordings from King’s over the last 60 years, and particularly in the
carol service, which provides a largely consistent framework of material within
which change and experiment can be safely attempted.
Musically, Whitbourn notes the recent transition of the carol at the hands of
‘art’ composers into a much more polished compositional form than its
‘vernacular’ origins, rooted in dance, would suggest.5 The King’s commissions
exemplify this transition. Several of the commissions fall unambiguously into
the category of art music, with little concession to the popular or utilitarian.
Yet Drage’s research on the ‘West Gallery’ tradition shows that although
psalmody (defined by Temperley as ‘music for a voluntary church choir without
professional guidance’) provides a clear contrast with the ‘art music’ choral
context for which the King’s commissions were composed, it is not necessarily
devoid of skill or musical complexity. 6 The same applies to carols.
Sir David Willcocks (Director of Music at King’s from 1957 to 1974), is
indissolubly associated not only with increasingly high levels of performance
and professionalism at King’s itself, but also with the editorship of the Carols for
5 Whitbourn (1996), 55. As well as being a composer and writer on church music, Whitbourn is also the regular producer of the televised Carols from King’s broadcasts. The division between ‘art’ and ‘vernacular’ music is derived from Temperley’s 1979 study of music in English parish churches. 6 Temperley (1979), vol. 1, 438.
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Choirs series, which brought many of the carol arrangements associated with
and popularised by King’s within the reach of ordinary parish choirs.7
In its earliest forms, the carol was sung by amateurs and not necessarily
intended for a liturgical context, but interacted with and commented on the
sacred in an accessible way. Percy Dearmer, in the preface to the Oxford Book
of Carols (1928), points out that the vast majority of carols nonetheless have
religious subjects, and many originate to mark religious feasts or seasons: what
differentiates them from music sung in church at that point is their ‘simple,
hilarious, popular’ style.8 Chapter 3 will look in more detail at the history of
the carol genre and its contested relationship with the liturgy, before moving
on to an examination of the history of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
itself.
The Nine Lessons and Carols format actually originated not at King’s, but in
Truro Cathedral between 1878 and 1880, when the order of service settled
into an order close to that still in use today. It was adapted for use at King’s in
1918 by Eric Milner-White, Dean of King’s and later Dean of York Minster, in
the aftermath of World War I. Despite a few variations in running order, the
basic shape of the service has remained largely unaltered since 1919, and has
been widely adopted in cathedrals, colleges and parish churches all over the
world.
Following the arrival of Stephen Cleobury as Director of Music at King’s in
1982, in every subsequent year the college has commissioned a range of
leading contemporary composers to write a new carol for performance on
Christmas Eve: among them are Thomas Adès, Jonathan Dove, Einojuhani
Rautavaara, Gabriel Jackson, Brett Dean, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Dominic
7 Technically, Willcocks returned to the college as Organist in 1957 while Ord was still in post, only becoming Director of Music the following year; but the King’s College Register (2017) of members of the college does not make this distinction, listing him as Director from 1957. 8 Dearmer (1928), v.
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Muldowney, Harrison Birtwistle and Tansy Davies. Of these, only a handful
contribute frequently or predominantly to church music, as opposed to other
contemporary classical genres. This is a deliberate choice on Cleobury’s part,
undertaken precisely in order to ensure that ‘there has been no shirking of
music in new and challenging idioms’.9 In commissioning composers whose
musical inspiration and experience is not primarily liturgical, Cleobury’s
intention is explicitly to ensure that church music does not become a ‘museum
piece’, stylistically isolated from developments elsewhere in the contemporary
classical music tradition, but a legitimate contribution to it.10 The extent to
which Cleobury has achieved his aim can be summarised by the Radio 3
announcement of the 2017 service, which acknowledged the annual
commission as a significant contribution not just to liturgical music, but to
choral music as a whole. Yet his policy raises the question of the extent to
which the King’s commissions are, or could be, representative of wider
developments in liturgical music throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
Context, and practicalities such as cost and rehearsal time, need to be
considered as well as the music itself.
The intention behind the King’s carol commissions has always been to ensure
that the established tradition of the carol service did not become fossilised, but
remains in dialogue with the best of secular composition. As well as becoming
something of a tradition in their own right, the King’s commissions have added
work by major contemporary composers to the repertoire of other cathedral
and collegiate choirs. It is true that to date, only half a dozen of the
commissions have penetrated into the mainstream repertoire. Many of the
others would prove beyond the range of all but the most technically capable
choirs, and even King’s choir itself has performed some of them only once- but 9 Sleeve notes to On Christmas Day: New Carols from King’s (EMI Classics 58070 2, 2005). 10 The Musical Times vol. 129 (December 1988): 687 & 689. Cleobury’s foreword to Carols from King’s expresses determination that the carol service should not become ‘a backwater disconnected from the mainstream’(Coghlan, 2016, ix).
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frequency of performance is not the only measure of impact. They have also
encouraged other choirs to commission, experiment, and work with
composers in a range of innovative projects: recent examples include Even You
Song, Peterborough Cathedral’s collaboration with Cheryl Frances-Hoad
(2017), and annual festivals of new music at Wells and Ripon, while several
choirs have adopted the idea of a commissioned carol.
To place the King’s commissions in the wider context of contemporary
developments in music for use in church, I will first examine some other recent
initiatives in commissioning for the liturgy, such as Choirbook for the Queen
(2011) and the Merton Choirbook (2013), together with some examples of
commissioning in English cathedrals. These will form the basis of chapter 4,
before going on to a more detailed discussion of the King’s commissions
themselves in chapter 5.
Although various shorter articles have been published about the history of the
King’s carol service, there has yet to be an in-depth analysis of the music
performed at the service, or of its impact on the wider church music
repertoire. The analysis provided in Chapter 5 cannot be completely
exhaustive, because not all the commissions have been published or are readily
available.11 Further, short of consulting every cathedral music list in the
country, which would have been unrealistic within the time constraints of part-
time study, there is no single source which can provide a systematic measure
of the commissions’ absorption or otherwise into the repertoire. Patton and
Taylor’s survey of music lists in cathedral and collegiate churches, published in
1998, provides an indication with respect to the first fifteen King’s
commissions and is therefore included in Appendix One as a source for the
analysis of the commissions before that date; but it is necessarily incomplete, 11 It has proved impossible to source scores of Muldowney’s Mary (2008), which is unpublished, and Birtwistle’s The Gleam (2003), which is not available from the publishers as a single copy. The information I have included on these two carols is based on commercially available recordings.
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and there has been no comparable study since which could be used to measure
the frequency and spread of performance of the commissions since 1998 in a
similar way.12 Despite this obvious limitation, Patton and Taylor remains a
useful source in respect of the earlier commissions, and for establishing the
extent to which some of the more recently commissioned composers had
previously written for liturgical performance.
By commissioning a new carol (among other works) every year since 1983,
Cleobury has proven that it is not merely those identified as ‘church
composers’ who will write church music, but that the best contemporary
musicians will happily write for a world-class choir to perform in a liturgical
setting.13 They have inspired cathedrals, colleges and parishes to commission
new work for their own contexts, and thus contributed to the development of
English church music as a living genre within the Western choral canon, and not
as an isolated tributary. The King’s commissions therefore provide a conscious
challenge to the idea that church music is necessarily a ‘backwater… stagnant
and weedy’ compared to the ‘far wider, faster-flowing stream’ of secular
music.14
By examining the King’s commissions in their multiple contexts- as vehicles for
the developing sound of a particular choir in a particular building; as exemplars
of a whole tradition which simultaneously raises questions about how ‘church
music’ or ‘liturgical music’ should sound; as examples of music written by
predominantly non-church composers for a specific act of worship; as evidence
for the expansion of a stylistically limited genre into something much less easily
defined- I hope to show how King’s, and in particular the King’s carol
12 Patton and Taylor (2000). 13 The Jewish composer Robert Saxton remarks that composing for the liturgy is ‘an enormous privilege’: Darlington and Kreider (2003), 62. 14 Leonard Blake (ECM 21/4, October 1951, p.76), quoted in Thomas (2015), 98.
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commissions since 1983, can be used to illustrate developments within the
wider tradition of English choral music as a whole.
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Chapter One: The purpose of music in worship: some debates and
issues
When, in our music, God is glorified
And adoration leaves no room for pride,
It is as though the whole creation cried:
Alleluia!
How often, making music, we have found
a new dimension in the world of sound,
as worship moved us to a more profound
Alleluia!
So has the church, in liturgy and song,
in faith and love, through centuries of wrong,
borne witness to the truth in every tongue:
Alleluia!15
The choir of King’s College can be used as an example in almost any argument
about music in church. In particular, it exemplifies the tension between two
contrasting approaches to church music over the last century: one
concentrated on high performance standards, often referred to as ‘art’ music
and perceived as elitist or exclusive; and a more utilitarian (or ‘vernacular’)
approach, focused on wider participation.
The development of the carol service over the last century brings into focus
several debates about the relationship between worship and music: liturgical or
non-liturgical, participatory or passive, performance by a few versus
15 Fred Pratt Green: Ancient and Modern: Hymns for Refreshing Worship no. 821 (Tune: Engelberg by C.V. Stanford)
21
involvement of the whole assembly, art music versus vernacular music, and the
conflicting demands of practicality and creativity.16 I shall argue that an
understanding of purpose is key to arriving at a working definition of the
distinctions between liturgical music, sacred music performed in concert, and
other forms of music in worship. Although there is not space here to treat this
question as extensively as it deserves, some of the key issues will be explored.
1.1 Music in worship: purpose and context
Howard Goodall comments that if music did not contribute something
distinctive to worship, the faithful could just say prayers, rather than needing to
sing them.17 The commissions for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols are
pieces of music written for one choir, in one place, on one occasion, within the
context of one discrete act of worship. What might they have to contribute to
a discussion of the wider purpose of music in church?
The musicologist Wilfrid Mellers argues that ‘sacred music’ can include music
which speaks to anyone who has ever wondered about the ‘big questions’ of
human life: purpose, meaning or beauty.18 Himself an agnostic, Mellers argues
that for the believer, music helps to create an atmosphere in which God is
made manifest through the engagement of the physical senses; the primary
purpose of sacred music is to aid and enhance worship. It illustrates both the
written text and the action of the liturgy. It can also contribute to a sense of
awe, wonder and transcendence, among believers and unbelievers alike.19
The relationship between purpose and context is key to an understanding of
music in worship. Whereas much twentieth-century music tended towards
complete abstraction and ‘pure form’, without reference to cultural traditions,
16 See below, section 1.4, for a fuller discussion of the art/vernacular divide. 17 Darlington and Kreider, 19. 18 Mellers (2002), xii. 19 Stephen Pritchard, Observer, 8/4/2018, comments that even Richard Dawkins is moved by Evensong.
22
James MacMillan asserts that the task of contemporary composers for the
liturgy is the exact opposite: their music exists precisely to make connections
between the divine and our human context.20 The distinctive purpose of
liturgical music is to communicate something of the divine reality.
Furthermore, the use of music in worship affirms the role that human
creativity plays in the divine purpose.21This begs the question of whether its
composer has to be a believer. Stravinsky apparently thought that in order to
write effectively for the liturgy, one must have a personal faith in what that
liturgy was trying to communicate.22 On the other hand, Parry, Howells,
Vaughan Williams, Britten, and more recently Jonathan Harvey and Gabriel
Jackson, all provide evidence to the contrary.
Mellers cites several works by composers who were not themselves people of
faith as it might conventionally be described, but which nonetheless point to
something beyond, something numinous or enhancing to the human spirit. He
quotes Rautavaara, whose Offerings they brought of gold was a King’s
commission in 2010, as saying he inherited a ‘taste for the infinite’ from his
Lutheran upbringing.23 Sacred music, whether or not it is part of a liturgical
event, is that which satisfies such a taste.
1.2 Sacred, liturgical or church music: some possible definitions
The enduring popularity of sacred music performed out of its liturgical context,
for example by groups such as The Sixteen or the Tallis Scholars (or indeed by
King’s choir itself), suggests that even if a piece was written for a specific
context, the relationship between style, form and purpose is not necessarily
fixed. Rebecca Frost’s overview of music in broadcast worship before World
War II suggests that ‘while there is still a vital role for music in enhancing the
20 Darlington and Kreider, 37. 21 Astley, Hone and Savage (eds.) (2000), 145. 22 Ross (2007), 125-8. 23 Mellers (2002), 310.
23
daily liturgy of the church, it has acquired a parallel secular context which is
not necessarily linked to its origins.’24 Jonathan Arnold, a priest and academic
who himself sang for a number of years with the Sixteen and the Tallis
Scholars, examines this phenomenon at some length in conversation with a
number of leading exponents of sacred music, including Harry Christophers
and Peter Phillips.25 He argues that the current popularity of sacred music as
concert repertoire owes much to the huge increase in those identifying as
‘spiritual but not religious’. In his examination of the relationship between
Pärt’s Orthodox faith and his music, Peter Bouteneff suggests that Pärt appeals
to the same constituency through a ‘numinous’ quality in the sound; but also
that this same quality is discernible whether or not the particular piece was
intended for liturgical use.26 Similar claims could be made for the music of
Tavener, Gorecki, or more recently Lauridsen and Whitacre. Howard Goodall
speaks of the power of sacred music to provide ‘solace and comfort’ even
when sung ‘in a language you don’t speak’.27
This phenomenon requires a closer look at the definitions of sacred music,
church music and liturgical music. As we have seen, sacred music may be
composed to liturgical or scriptural texts, but performed in or out of the
context of worship. In some cases, its form makes it unsuitable for liturgical
performance: the Requiems of Verdi or Berlioz, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis,
Vivaldi’s Gloria. Bernstein’s Mass and Britten’s War Requiem distance the sacred
text still further from liturgical application by placing it in a new context.
Bach had strong feelings about the need for a ‘well-regulated church music’,
but his definition of ‘church music’ included any and all music performed in
church, because its purpose overrides its form: instrumental music can be
24 Frost (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London), 10. 25 Arnold (2014). 26 Bouteneff (2015), 26-32. 27 Darlington and Kreider, 28.
24
employed as effectively in the praise of God as music set to a sacred text.28 At
the same time, the styles and idioms he employed in his liturgical music were
not confined by that context, to the point that he was accused of impropriety.
So Bach confounds easy distinctions between sacred and secular music, both in
style and in purpose. As György Kurtag commented, Bach’s music ‘never stops
praying’, whether or not it was written for the liturgy.29
Mellers takes a similarly broad view: he defines ‘religious’ music as that which
is ‘good because it embraces the heights and depths of human consciousness’.
The Jewish composer Robert Saxton responds similarly, suggesting that
liturgical music does not have a monopoly on the sacred. He cites Beethoven’s
quartet Op.132 as ‘a wordless hymn of thanksgiving’.30 Music which was not
written for liturgical use or to a consciously sacred text may still be able to
convey something of the sacred: some alternative forms of worship use rock
music and nursery rhyme to connect to those who may be alienated by
classical idioms.
‘Church music’ can be interpreted as music written from within a particular
tradition or belief system, to aid the worship of that particular community.
That does not make it easy to define. As Drage comments, ‘The choice and
function of church music has always been a subject for debate. As worship is
reformed or reinterpreted to maintain its relevance, new texts and tunes are
created, whereas others lose their resonance and are discarded.’31
Liturgical music may be defined as music set to liturgical texts, such as
plainchant or Anglican chant, sections of the mass or the divine office. Worship
songs and choruses, which overwhelmingly reflect a pop idiom, might resist the
definition ‘liturgical’, because the forms of worship for which they are written
28 Letter to Georg Erdmann, 1730; quoted in Gardiner (2014), 288. 29 Gardiner (2014), 154. 30 Darlington and Kreider (2003), 56. 31 Drage (2009), 5.
25
are less structured and more personal; but they are equally an expression of
faith in musical form, without necessarily being a vehicle for doctrine in the
way that ‘liturgical’ music tends to be.
If ‘sacred music’ is that which can appeal to the ‘spiritual but not religious’
when heard outside the context of worship, however, the carol is perhaps the
ideal musical form to create a bridge between the more broadly defined sacred
music, and the more specific purposes of liturgical music. Just as music
originally written for the liturgy (or to liturgical texts) can be performed in
concert, so music for use in church might make use of forms and sources
from outside the church; the carol is an obvious example of non-church music
which has been adapted for liturgical use. Its ability to evoke nostalgia, lost
innocence and tradition extends beyond those who hold to a confessional
religious faith, towards a common human desire for order and simplicity in a
changing world: but it also comments on a text which demands a response.
Chapter 3 will describe several examples of this process.
Among the King’s commissions, the text of Pärt’s Bogoroditse Dyevo (1990) is
liturgical, but drawn from the Orthodox rather than the Anglican tradition. A
number of the other commissions have texts drawn from liturgical material
(despite its name, Swayne’s Winter Solstice Carol (1998) draws for part of its
text on the Magnificat antiphons for Christmas Day) but taken out of their
immediate liturgical context, or mixed with other texts for effect.
The majority of the commissions are settings of devotional but not explicitly
liturgical texts, with a wider application than the Christmas season alone;
Muldowney’s Mary (2008) takes its text from a poem by Bertolt Brecht, in
which both Jesus and Mary look back at the nativity from an adult perspective,
while Szirtes’ poem The Flight (2015) relates the plight of the Holy Family to
the current refugee crisis. Others barely even qualify as ‘sacred’: from Lennox
26
Berkeley’s In Wintertime (1983) to Richard Rodney Bennett’s On Christmas Day
to my Heart (1999) to Carl Vine’s setting of Tennyson’s Ring out, wild bells
(2012), the definitions have been interpreted broadly.
Stevens comments that since carols, like other music, were subsidiary to the
visual impact of liturgy and ritual, ‘ceremonial’ may be the best description of
their purpose.32 Thus it can be argued that the carol is indeed identifiable as
liturgical music: it is for use in a particular rite, rather than a fixed location, and
has a particular function to ‘adorn’ that rite. It is, however, possible to argue
that carols are still not ‘church music’ in the narrow sense, because they do
not belong to a particular worshipping community: their appeal and application
is wider than the particular context for which they were written.
1.3 ‘Why is church music so bad?’: excellence and elitism
‘Music may be an integral part of a service, a common experience in which all
can participate, or it may be performed by a select group, who inspire or
irritate congregations depending on their musical skill’.33 Drage’s comments
illustrate a consistent tension in church music between the quest for
excellence and accusations of elitism. The difficulty in resolving this dilemma
means that church music has often been associated with poor quality, both in
compositional style and performance. The question of what constitutes poor
quality, and why particular music work (or not) in the context of particular
acts of worship, has always been contentious, and is difficult to detach from
questions of personal taste. The Music in Worship report of 1922
simultaneously deprecated 'trivial, tawdry, superficial, inherently poor, small-
minded and cheaply sentimental' music in church, and objected to 'the idioms
of the opera and the concert-room' being employed in worship; all of which
32 Stevens (1970), xiv. See also Harper (1991), 14. 33 Drage (2009), 5.
27
suggests it had a fairly limited view of the kind of music which was
appropriate.34
Further examination of King’s College choir and its carol commissions may
throw some light on the complex relationship which exists between music as a
vital component of an act of worship, and as a virtuoso performance which
may have very little connection with the glory of God. Nor is this debate
restricted to the Anglican choral tradition: recent scholarship on praise music
is now asking whether it it is as elitist in its own way as robed choirs, since the
increased emphasis on ‘celebrity’ solo performers detracts from a sense of
communal participation which is seen by many to be key to worship. 35
In his book English Cathedral Music and Liturgy in the 20th Century, Martin
Thomas attracted criticism from scholars and church musicians alike for
asserting that most new music commissioned by cathedrals during the 20th
century was neither challenging nor innovative in style.36 He also suggests that
this perceived lack of innovation creates a separation between music written
for the church, and the rest of contemporary classical composition. While in
broad sympathy with Thomas’ plea for more adventurous church music,
Michael Nicholas points out, both in his 2015 article in Laudate and his very
carefully-phrased foreword to Thomas’ book, that there is no such thing as a
universally agreed classical mainstream against which ‘church music’ can be
identified and quantified: chamber music, opera, jazz, and song are not
necessarily developing in the same ways, or at the same rate. Thomas’
argument rests on seeing church music as a sub-genre of ‘classical’ music: but
just as classical music does not consist of one homogenous genre or style, nor
should church music be treated as if it were all the same. The Western
classical canon did not undergo uniform stylistic developments which left 34 Music in Worship (1922), 7. 35 cf. Page (2004). 36 Thomas (2015).
28
church music struggling in its wake. As Jeremy Dibble points out, for example,
Stanford’s church music assimilates secular music: it does not develop along
different technical or stylistic lines but employs the same idioms.37 It is equally
misleading to suggest that ‘church music’ is one unified genre with a single
point of application to the liturgy.
Thomas’ critique of Christian liturgical choral music is not new. In 1929, R.R.
Terry wrote an article combatively titled ‘Why is church music so bad?’38 Like
S.S. Wesley before him, Terry pointed to a lack of skill and inventiveness
among church musicians, an emphasis on encouraging a culture of ‘amateurism’
which militated against high standards, and poor repertoire.39 During his
tenure at Westminster Cathedral, Terry not only introduced to English
cathedrals a great wealth of European music, including new editions of
Renaissance composers and the great French organist-composers like Duruflé,
Langlais, Vierne and Messiaen; he also fought to raise standards in church
music.
In many instances, critiques of church music were, and are, entirely justified.
Scholes remarked in the first edition of the Oxford Companion to Music that ‘the
accepted idioms of currently composed church music are in general several
generations behind those of serious secular music’.40 The music performed at
Westminster Abbey to celebrate Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, written by
Bridge and Stainer, is uniformly dull and unadventurous; even the inclusion of a
Te Deum by the Prince Consort (himself a friend of Mendelssohn)41 does not
improve matters greatly:
37 Keynote speech to Church Music and Worship conference, University of Durham, April 2018. 38 Terry (1929), 105-125. 39 Wesley’s 1849 diatribe against low standards in cathedral music will be discussed in chapter 2. 40 Scholes (1938), 168. 41 Gant (2015), 283, describes his Te Deum as ‘quite good bad Mendelssohn’!.
29
Fig. 1: Te Deum bars 21-24
Scholes comments that ‘mere sentimentality is in the church music of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries very often allowed to masquerade as high
devotional feeling’; ability to provoke a pious response does not justify poor
quality, even (perhaps especially) in music intended for worship. Excellence in
performance is held by many church musicians to glorify God, but others
would argue that the praise of God is equally well served by the harmony of
ordinary creatures singing together for that purpose.42
A similar argument applies to the texts used in liturgy. Cleobury argues
passionately for the retention of the King James Version of the Bible for the
readings of the Nine Lessons themselves. Together, text and music create an
aesthetic based on excellence. Once again, this raises the spectre of elitism: the
King James Bible, which dates from 1611, no longer reflects (if it ever did) how
ordinary people think or speak, nor is it the most scholastically accurate
rendition of the Hebrew and Greek texts; but it has a cultural value which
other translations do not have. Utilitarianism and artistic integrity are not
mutually exclusive: Cleobury’s argument is that the KJV contributes to the
42 The arguments on both sides are well summarised in Whitbourn (1996).
30
success of the Nine Lessons and Carols because the beauty of its language
makes it uniquely fit for purpose. Likewise, music in the context of worship
needs to connect with people, but Cleobury argues that it is important not to
‘dumb down’ the musical contribution in order to make that connection.
To the Puritan sensibility, ‘church music’ should consist of simple tunes sung by
all together, albeit not necessarily in unison:43 in 1645 it was considered ‘the
duty of Christians to praise God publiquely (sic) by singing of Psalmes together
in the congregation’.44 Drage details how church choirs, initially formed to
lead and encourage congregations in this style of singing, gradually became a
separate elite and their music a performance.45
The suspicion that elitism is inherent to the choral tradition dies hard. Scholes
contends that ‘good music is good music, in church or out of it’, but that
whatever style of music is employed in church, it deserves ‘the highest
possible… standard of performance’.46 However, this view has been challenged
as elitist, notably by those who place high importance on the experience of
shared corporate worship.
Among recent scholarship, a vocal proponent of this view is June Boyce-
Tillman. In a lecture given to launch her book on women’s contribution to
liturgical music, Boyce-Tillman made the rather odd claim that the carol
descants written by Sir David Willcocks for King’s are ‘elitist’, on the grounds
that they are beyond the range of most parish choirs. This is easy enough to
refute: in his memoirs, Willcocks makes it clear that the intention behind the
arrangements which gave rise to the Carols for Choirs series, begun in 1961 by
Willcocks and Reginald Jacques, was precisely the opposite of elitist: ‘it was well
43 Drage (2009), 56. 44 Drage (2009), 43. 45 Drage (2009), 45-55. 46 Scholes (1938), 167.
31
within the range of the average parish church choir and wasn’t designed for
professional choirs’.47
In the same book, Boyce-Tillman quotes an American monk as saying that
‘King’s College Choir has done for church music what Barbie has done for
women’.48 However, this is not a genuine analogy. King’s may represent an
ideal, but it is not an impossible ideal in the way that Barbie is, anatomically
speaking, an impossible woman: physiologists have argued that a real person
with Barbie’s proportions would be unable to stand up because her skeleton is
malformed.49 Yet King’s College Choir is not different from other choirs in its
essence: at times in its history there have been other choirs who have better
fulfilled the particular ideals of which King’s became the most famous, but not
necessarily consistently the best, example.
Day’s research into the social history of King’s choir certainly highlights some
areas in which charges of elitism might more accurately be levelled: not least
that it is an all-male choir whose choristers attend an independent boarding
school and whose senior members study at a Cambridge college. By contrast,
the musical standard which King’s represents does not rely solely on inhuman
degrees of talent or a distortion of the norm, but is attainable to other choirs
with hard work and practice.
Insofar as most parish choirs have neither the resources nor the will to sing
the kind of work which is commissioned by King’s, or indeed by other
cathedral and collegiate choirs, King’s does represent an elite. But this is not
the whole of the story; for it has also showcased pieces which are accessible at
every level. The Christmas carol tradition associated with the King’s
commissions has therefore entered the repertoire in two places; one, the
47 Owen (2008), p.141-2. 48 Boyce-Tillman (2015), 236. 49 In 2012 the artist Jason Feeny created ‘Anatomical Barbie’, a life-size model with the same proportions as a Barbie doll, to underline the physical impossibility of a real person emulating Barbie’s shape.
32
‘popular’ repertoire accessible to parish choirs and amateur singers,
exemplified by the Willcocks arrangements and descants popularised through
Carols for Choirs; and the other, more demanding works which are not intended
for congregational use but to be sung predominantly by cathedral and ‘greater
church’ choirs.50 The Cleobury commissions include examples of both.
1.4 Art versus vernacular music: utilitarianism and aesthetics
The claim that King’s represents a musical elitism can perhaps be understood
as a conflict between competing aesthetics, represented by art and vernacular
music. Art music focuses on awe, wonder, transcendence and the beauty of
holiness; vernacular music on participation, involvement, experience, and
storytelling. Both share a purpose: to glorify God in worship. The way they do
so is profoundly different.
Thomas unashamedly champions ‘art’ music as part of a claim that music
composed for the liturgy can make a serious contribution to the classical
canon, while Boyce-Tillman’s concern is for community participation and the
discovery of a shared voice in worship. Boyce-Tillman’s position on the
purpose of liturgical music is based on an almost entirely utilitarian view that
music for the liturgy should be music of and for the people. Both are trained
musicians and ordained Anglican priests, but their views represent opposing
extremes.
Thomas argues strongly against a merely utilitarian approach to church music,
in which the music is seen merely as ‘handmaid’ or adjunct to the liturgy. It is
interesting that none of the professional church musicians with whom I spoke
in the course of this study had much sympathy for his views. As Darlington and
Kreider note, ‘practical considerations shape the music that is written’; this is
also true of how it is performed, even at the highest level. In chapter 5 we will
50 This argument is made by both Gant (2014) and Coghlan (2016).
33
consider some of the constraints attendant even on the King’s commissions.51
Such necessary practicalities include the cost of commissioning new material;
the pragmatic limitations surrounding learning and rehearsing new repertoire,
with a choir which may have to sing seven or eight services a week. Lack of
rehearsal time was highlighted by every choir director, along with the rapid
turnover in the back rows, now that many cathedrals are augmented by choral
scholars. The fact that there are often two alternating treble lines as well
means that in every voice part there will be someone to whom much of the
repertoire is new every time it occurs.
At least one of the choral directors consulted for this study admitted that
there is an extent to which the Christmas music he commissions for his choir
‘plays safe’ stylistically; but this is not because of some misguided nostalgic
impulse which rules out anything more adventurous.52 Rather, it is driven by
the desire to reach a wider audience, and help them to engage both with the
music itself and the purpose for which it was written. As Cleobury has
demonstrated to such effect in the Nine Lessons and Carols, a balance
between musical experimentation and congregational conservatism is achieved
through a judicious mixture of old and new items; familiar favourites create a
framework within which it becomes possible to introduce new and more
challenging repertoire.
Thomas is certainly correct to note that that much of the language used about
church music is utilitarian (for example, reviews of new choral music in Choir
and Organ, which frequently describe pieces as ‘useful’; the five-volume set of
EMI recordings of English Church Music from the 1960s includes canticle settings
described in the sleeve notes as ‘workmanlike’).53 However, this is music for a
51 Darlington and Kreider (2003), 7. 52 Robert Sharpe, personal communication 19/10/17 53 Morehen, referring to Rootham in E minor: sleeve notes to EMI Classics, The Treasury of English Church Music (CD 5 tracks 14-15, sung by Wells Cathedral choir)
34
specific purpose, so it is not surprising if it is judged according to its ability to
fulfil that purpose, as well as on its aesthetic merits.
As the views of both Terry and Thomas suggest, the debate about
utilitarianism in church music is essentially an argument about taste, and about
the relative importance of art and function in liturgical music. Yet the two do
not have to be in binary opposition. By and large, for all sorts of reasons
church musicians cannot afford not to make pragmatic choices about their
repertoire; but that does not have to mean compromising on standards, either
of composition or performance. If music is written for a specific purpose, in
this case to enable and enhance worship, that does not have to change its
intrinsic value; nor does it necessarily mean that it cannot be art. Scholes
remarks, perhaps with a degree of tongue-in-cheek, that ‘it would appear that
the first duty of the church musician is the acquirement [sic] of a standard of
musical taste’.54
As one correspondent to King’s notes, too close a concern for popular taste
can lead to a lack of innovation in any artistic medium.55 Such restraint is not
restricted to music; though Thomas is probably right to argue that cathedrals
have been more willing to engage in controversial commissioning of visual art
than of music, it is also true that such work stays in place for longer and thus
has the potential to reach more people. Analysis of rates of repeat
performance of the King’s commissions will show that, with relatively few
exceptions, the commissions have largely not been absorbed into the
repertoire. This may not, however, be a reflection of their quality as art, so
much as a function of Cleobury’s determination to keep the tradition fluid by
consciously choosing not to repeat them.56
54 Scholes (1938), 166. 55 ‘I am well aware how difficult it is to introduce new music, drama or any art to the general public’ (Letter from Friede Waite, 23/1/89, KCAR/8/3/21/13-) 56 This point will be expanded in chapter 5.
35
There are valid reasons why ideas which appear creative on the page or in the
studio do not work in performance, but which have nothing to do with stylistic
conservatism. Not every adventurous composer has a natural grasp of the
technical demands of writing effectively for voices: as Harper comments,
‘composers do not always have a grasp of rehearsal time or the limitations of
voices’.57 These and other practical aspects of commissioning will be examined
in more detail in chapter 4.
1.5 Stylistic conservatism and the King’s commissions
If church music is innately conservative in its idioms, this may be because the
importance of function outweighs creativity of form in music whose purpose is
to adorn and comment on the liturgy. In his history of twentieth century
Western classical music, Ross argues that avant-garde music in the hands of
Boulez (and to a lesser extent Messiaen and Schoenberg) was a deliberate
response to the horrors of war; beauty itself was morally compromised.58 If
this is true, any attempt to express the beauty of holiness must necessarily
sound stylistically conservative, because it relies on a set of aesthetic
assumptions which musical modernism had deliberately rejected.
In his desire for more stylistically challenging liturgical music, Thomas pays
scant attention to the fact that such music is bound to respond in some way to
the needs of worshippers. Nor is it merely worshippers who may struggle with
more ‘advanced’ music in worship. In Tune With Heaven suggests that neither
congregations nor performers enjoy avant-garde music in worship.59 Thomas is
certainly right that practical considerations should not of themselves mitigate
against creativity and innovation, but, as he comments of Elisabeth Lutyens’ The
country of the stars, considering its ‘very difficult pitching and impossibly high
57 Darlington and Kreider, 158. 58 Ross (2007), 388-396. 59 In Tune with Heaven (1992), 160.
36
pianissimo’, it is hard to imagine many choirs wanting to sing such a piece
regularly, if at all.60 A German guide to Anglican church music cites Lutyens’
tone-row canticles for Coventry Cathedral, written in 1966, as an example of
more stylistically demanding repertoire; but it had already fallen out of use
even there by the 1980s.61 As we shall see in chapter 4, choral directors and
singers cannot ignore such practical considerations.
In Tune with Heaven does not mention any living composers on its list of those
who had made serious contributions to 20th-century church music; Thomas
sees the composition of the list itself as evidence of a stylistic conservatism
concerning the definition of ‘church music’.62 The report appears to make a
distinction between ‘serious’ composition in the middle of the century and
more recent works intended for congregational use by composers such as
Aston, Shephard and Rutter; the implication is that serious liturgical
composition had entirely given way to a more accessible style.63 The report
thus reinforces Cleobury’s two-fold rationale for commissioning new work
from composers who are not considered ‘church musicians’: both to enrich the
liturgy with the work of the best available professional musicians, so that
‘church music’ does not become stylistically static or old-fashioned, and to
demonstrate that our best composers, secular or sacred, still consider
Christian worship a context worth writing for. Many of those who have
composed for the liturgy- for example Britten, Walton, Leighton, or Tippett in
the twentieth century, or more recently MacMillan, Harvey or Dove- cannot
be easily dismissed either as stylistic conservatives or as inaccessibly avant-
60 Thomas (2015), 112 61 Krieg (2007), 140-1. His historical overview of Anglican music is thorough and interesting, but his view of ‘typical’ repertoire raises some questions, as this example illustrates. 62 In Tune with Heaven (1992), 160-1. 63 The only listed ‘serious’ composer who was still alive when the report was compiled was William Mathias, who died in the year it was published. By contrast, two of the four listed composers of accessible congregational settings, Shephard and Rutter, are still alive 26 years after the report’s publication. The unintended implication, on which Thomas draws, is that younger composers do not write serious liturgical music.
37
garde. MacMillan, whose liturgical music is identifiably in the same voice as his
secular output, points out that tradition is not in itself reactionary, but that you
have to understand it in order to change it.64
The King’s commissions suggest, however, that the carol does not necessarily
have to conform to backward-looking or restrictive compositional norms; the
same must be true for all forms of music in worship. While generally critical of
twentieth-century cathedral music, Thomas refers approvingly to several
individual King’s commissions, among them Burrell’s Christo paremus cantica
(1993) and Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem (1985); but does not mention some of
the most stylistically experimental, such as Goehr’s Carol of St Steven (1989), or
Birtwistle’s The Gleam (2003).
Thomas’ book also omits some significant developments elsewhere in
contemporary church music. The annual St Pancras Festival of Contemporary
Church Music gets only a fleeting reference, and the Edington Festival of Music
in the Liturgy none at all. Although King’s is collegiate and its commissions thus
fall outside the literal scope of a book on cathedral music, Thomas might
usefully have considered some significant attempts on the part of cathedrals to
commission new repertoire; among them the annual New Music Wells festival
initiated by Matthew Owens in 2008, which has even led to a dedicated
‘commissions’ page on the cathedral website to encourage sponsorship, and
the Choirbook for the Queen (2011), specifically intended to produce new music
for every cathedral in the country to sing for the Diamond Jubilee, which will
be considered in further detail in chapter 4.65 Like the King’s commissions, the
Choirbook was a deliberate attempt to encourage contemporary composers to
write for the church. It contains examples from both established ‘church’
64 Astley, Hone and Savage (2000), 15-17. 65 https://www.wellscathedral.org.uk/music-the-choir/new-music-wells/
38
composers and those whose output is predominantly secular: but its purpose
is clearly aligned towards liturgical use.
The Merton Choirbook (2013), curated by Ben Nicholas for the choir of Merton
College, Oxford, has provided at least one anthem and one set of canticles
now in wider use.66 Since Thomas’ focus is on cathedral music of the twentieth
century, it is technically true that the Merton Choirbook and the Wells Festival
fall outside his remit (it is less easy to justify the exclusion of Choirbook for the
Queen, albeit a 21st-century publication, because of its cathedral focus).
However, not only have St Pancras and Edington been going for long enough to
have made a significant contribution to the world of liturgical music: it is also
the case that singers, organists and composers move regularly between
institutions, influencing changes in repertoire as they do so. Thomas might
usefully have improved the balance of his argument by acknowledging this.
In 1922, at the time of the first Archbishops’ report, it would have been
unthinkable to include aleatoric passages, shouting, clapping or stamping in
music composed for the liturgy: Harrison Birtwistle’s The Gleam (2003)
employed all of them, while Causton’s The Flight (2015) required trebles to
sound like sirens. More recently Gabriel Jackson and Jonathan Harvey, among
others, have proven that stylistic conservatism is not a necessary characteristic
of church music. If King’s are seen to be willing to introduce such techniques
into the inherently ‘traditional’ atmosphere of a carol service, other choirs are
inspired to investigate a broader range of possibilities for themselves. Some of
the innovations King’s has made are now so widespread that it is easy to forget
they were not always there. One letter in the King’s archive complains volubly
about the ‘perfect rainstorm of descants!’ in the 1987 service, but it is now
almost inconceivable to imagine the service as it was in 1954, with no descants
66 Dove’s Vast ocean of light, Esenvalds’ Merton Service.
39
at all.67 Not everyone who sings along to the carols will wish to emulate them,
but they have become an indissoluble part of the experience.
Carols have always provided a vehicle for choirs to experiment with style and
technique. Although his King’s commission, Fix one star, at last (1984) is simple
in construction, Peter Maxwell Davies’ work with his own school choir, for
whom he wrote and arranged several carols, proved that very ordinary choirs
can indeed sing complex music. John Joubert’s popular carol, Torches, was
composed in 1951 for a school choir directed by his wife Mary: it appears in
Carols for Choirs and is performed by King’s on the carol disc On Christmas
Night, recorded in 1962. Britten also had a lasting fascination both for the carol
form and for writing for children’s voices, including for those who were not
musically trained. So the combination of serious composers and the carol is
not new, nor is it necessarily elitist.
There are undeniably some works among the recent Christmas commissions
which were written not so much for the occasion (that is, for the liturgy) as
for the particular strengths of the choir which commissioned them. In some
cases the resulting music is too demanding for an average choir, and has
therefore not made the transition to the popular repertoire in the way that
the Willcocks descants did. This does not mean that they are elitist, nor
indeed of limited utility. As communications in its archive make clear, the
King’s commissions have stimulated church musicians elsewhere to think about
what they could do with their own choirs: ‘those of us who are amateur singers
or choral directors particularly appreciate hearing broadcasts of new or
unfamiliar Christmas carol arrangements, and being able to seek out copies of
those we like, for our own possible use’.68
67 Letter to Stephen Cleobury 24/12/87, KCAR/8/3/21/13- 68 KCAR/8/3/21/13: one of many letters to the BBC (1990) responding negatively to their decision not to print the details of that year’s service in full in the Radio Times.
40
The state of contemporary church music is not static. As well as the
innovations undetaken by cathedrals and festivals, there are developments at
the parish and congregational level which meet the needs highlighted by Boyce-
Tillman.69 It is claiming too much to suggest that King’s is directly responsible
for these developments in the repertoire: but it is also true to say that the
systematic policy of annual commissioning for the carol service, from
composers whose output is not primarily liturgical, has been widely imitated by
collegiate and cathedral choirs. Instead of placing an impossible burden on
would-be imitators, King’s has enriched the repertoire with Christmas music
which is, in one way or another, within everyone’s reach; but which also
continues to expand the perception of what is possible in liturgical music.
Further, the existence of such a significant body of new music itself helps to
refute arguments that church music is intrinsically unadventurous. One example
will suffice here. Mark-Anthony Turnage is not predominantly a church
composer, though he has composed operas and is therefore skilled in the
technicalities of writing for voices.
Fig. 2: Misere’ Nobis, bars 23-27
69 For example the diocese-wide InHarmony project in St Edmundsbury and Ipswich (2017), which aims to resource parish music in a variety of ways.
41
Turnage’s Misere’ Nobis (2006), originally a King’s carol commission and also
included in the Choirbook, is based on a text with the classic stanza-burden
structure which identifies a true carol; but its frequent changes of time
signature (complete with triplets and dotted rhythms), and complex harmonies
requiring careful attention to tuning (e.g. the enharmonic seconds in several
voice parts in bars 22- 25), confound the perception that carols are necessarily
simple or vernacular music.
Unlike some of the commissions, Turnage does not include any solo passages,
and the vocal range in each part is not demanding. The challenge, as with a
number of the commissions, lies in the need for precision in dynamics, rhythm
and harmony. Misere’ Nobis is neither stylistically backward-looking, nor
impossibly difficult. It therefore demonstrates that it is indeed possible to find a
resolution to some of the issues in church music explored in this chapter.
42
Chapter Two: The development of the ‘King’s sound’ and the
professionalisation of church music
Timothy Day’s full-length study, published to coincide with the 100th
anniversary of the Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s, maps the choir’s impact
on an ‘English singing style’ which did not exist even in Cambridge prior to the
early 20th century, but which has since expanded beyond the collegiate and
cathedral choir to influence a whole generation of performers of early music,
both sacred and secular.70 The fact that King’s produced far more broadcasts
and recordings than any other choir throughout the twentieth century helped
to form expectations of an ‘ideal sound’, which Day identifies explicitly not
only with King’s but with the boy treble whose solo verse of Once in Royal
David’s City has begun every carol service since 1919 and thus popularised that
particular sound: as Dyson remarked, the ‘essence’ of this choral style was the
boy’s voice and the men were at their best when they blended with that clean
white tone’.71 For this reason, I shall pay detailed attention to the ‘King’s
sound’, its evolution, and some of the alternatives which, for various reasons,
did not come to epitomise the tradition in the way that King’s did. Day’s book,
in line with some of his earlier work, makes the link between the King’s sound
and the carol service: through broadcasting and recording, the Festival of Nine
Lessons and Carols from King’s almost singlehandedly changed the public’s
expectation of what church music should sound like, and exposed them to new
repertoire written for, informed by, or reacting against that sound.
Although it is instantly recognisable at any period, recordings demonstrate that
the King’s sound itself is not static or unchanged. Stephen Cleobury
commented in a television documentary of 1992 that he had not deliberately
70 Day (2018) expands on previous research on cathedral choirs, the treble sound and the impact of recording. 71 Dyson (1952), 492.
43
set out to change the sound, but that nonetheless it had changed in tone and
colour.72
Debates about style and taste concerning what is ‘fitting’ in church music have
also had an impact on the way it sounds. The perception that there was an
‘English sound’ was to a large extent created, and then perpetuated, by the
popularity of King’s recordings and broadcasts.73 The development and
popularisation of the ‘King’s sound’ throughout the 20th century was greatly
aided by the wider availability of broadcasts and recordings against which
standards of performance and accuracy could be measured: both their own
performance through the ages, and that of other choirs singing the same
repertoire. Recordings from King’s under Ord, Willcocks, Ledger, and now
Cleobury, have also been instrumental in building a level of expectation by
which both performance practice and repertoire have been shaped.74
In their fidelity to a particular sound, and the methods required to produce it,
King’s created a brand without necessarily knowing that is what they were
doing. There are now a number of cathedral or collegiate choirs whose sound
is characterised by the same vocal clarity, accuracy of attack, minimal vibrato
and tonal purity which is associated with King’s. In turn, these choirs have
continued to contribute members to professional choirs. All of these groups
draw heavily on the training and the repertoire learnt in ecclesiastical settings,
whether or not the repertoire they are singing is itself sacred or liturgical.
Aside from the cultural and sociological factors surrounding the emergence of
an idealised choral sound, there have always been several alternative sounds
associated with the sacred music repertoire: it is undeniably true that there is
a real difference not only between a top line of trebles (of either gender) and
72 King’s College Choir (Omnibus series 30 episode 14, BBC, 1992) 73 Timothy Day (2014), 82-90. 74 Day (2000), 152. Because it is possible to edit out imperfections from recordings, false expectations are created about future performance.
44
one of adult sopranos, but also between treble sounds identified with the
‘English’ and ‘Continental’ styles of voice production and vocal colour, or
between trained and untrained children’s voices. Even within the all-male
choral tradition of which King’s is so often taken to be the epitome, there are,
and always have been, other models which use a different technique and
produce a different sound (for example Temple Church under George
Thalben-Ball, or St John’s, Cambridge under George Guest).
2.1 The origins of the King’s sound
The ‘heart-wrenching’ sound of a solo treble at 3pm on Christmas Eve is the
real start of Christmas for many.75 Although it has certainly evolved and
changed over time, as recording and broadcasting makes clear, the same pure,
‘white’ vibrato-less treble is the consistently recognisable feature of the King’s
sound.76 In part this distinctive style is dictated by the acoustic; Willcocks
observes that in the distinctive surroundings of the chapel, ‘audibility is best
(and most beautiful) on a pure vowel’.77 But how did this come to be the
sound of English church music, when both Wesley and Mendelssohn explicitly
preferred the richer sound made by adult women? Wesley’s view was
characteristically forthright: ‘[Boys’ voices] are at best a poor substitute for the
vastly superior quality and power of those of women’.78 Mendelssohn
remarked that boys sounded ‘like cats’ voices, shrill and screechy’.79
Although few would now agree with their view, it is true that King’s is both the
quintessence of the cathedral sound, and different from that made by most
cathedral choirs.80 King’s was among the first to create a back line using the
75 Pritchard (2015), 7. 76Day (2000b), 125, points out that the description ‘white’can be used both positively (implying purity and accuracy) and negatively (indicating a lack of colour or audible engagement) . 77 The Boast of King’s DVD (Alto/Prometheus 1980). 78 S. S. Wesley (1849), 73. 79 Day (2014), 83. 80 Day (2014), 82-90.
45
younger voices of undergraduate choral scholars instead of paid lay clerks. In
the 21st century, an all-male choir whose choristers attend a residential choir
school is now in a minority.
The abandonment of lay clerks in favour of choral scholars, the establishment
of a choir school, and the appointment of an organist (Arthur ‘Daddy’ Mann)
with a proper understanding of voice production, were all important markers
in the development of the King’s sound.81 Day, Marston and Mould all
comment on the fact that King’s has not always been a benchmark of ‘elite’
level performance.82 In 1843, indeed, King’s choir was described as ‘radically
bad’. The then organist, John Pratt, had been in post for over 40 years and was
also in charge of music at both Peterhouse and the University church, Great St
Mary’s, in consequence leaving most of the work to an ex-chorister who was
not adequate for the role. 83
Jeremy Filsell, an English organist now based at St Thomas’ Fifth Avenue,
comments that ‘there is a tendency for many US organist-choir directors to
want straight tone in the mistaken belief that British choirs with boys and male
altos sound ‘like this’’ (i.e. without vibrato).84 Filsell points out that not only is
vibrato natural to the voice (although it needs to be carefully controlled when
singing in ensemble, so as not to compromise pitch; a point also made by Peter
Phillips, who maintains that singing with vibrato means to be ‘out of tune 50%
of the time’!) but also that no current British choir made up of men and boys
does sound ‘like this’. While he acknowledges that this idealised sound was
achieved by King’s in the 1960s, from which it did become the yardstick for
many, Filsell also underlines the fact that this has not consistently been the
81 Marston’s essay on Mann in Massing and Zeeman (2014) notes that the last lay clerk departed in 1928, the year in which the King’s carol service was first broadcast. 82 Mould (2007, 139) cites Thomas Tudway, organist at King’s 1671-1728, as having a poor opinion of prevailing standards. 83 W.E. Dickson, quoted in Rainbow (2001), 207. 84 Filsell, Choir and Organ May/June 2018, 69.
46
case: the difference between the Ord era and that of Willcocks is clearly
discernible in their recordings.
• Musical extract 1: C.V. Stanford, Magnificat in G (King’s College Choir/Ord,
1955, solo treble Richard White).
The sleeve notes to the Stanford recording point out that it was very unusual
for Ord to allow a treble to develop his voice in such a distinctive way, rather
than preserving the ensemble. White was very much an exception.85 In this
Ord was the complete opposite of George Guest at St John’s, who fostered a
‘star’ treble in every generation and used them to good effect in recordings.
The unique acoustic of King’s is one constant factor in the development of the
King’s sound.86 In the nineteenth century, one commentator remarked that
the King’s acoustic was ‘so flattering to the singers’ that congregations forgave
their general lack of musical competence.87 Ledger has a slightly different view
of the particular demands placed on the choir by the unusually resonant
chapel acoustic: ‘if you’re singing well, the acoustic enhances it. If you’re singing
badly, the unfortunate sound you’re making is perpetuated for longer!’88
John Potter comments that when singing in a distinctive environment, it is
necessary to work with its particularities to the extent that you are ‘singing the
building’.89 Daniel Hyde, appointed in 2018 as the successor to Stephen
Cleobury, agrees: although he admits to some reservations about the
‘traditional very polite English cathedral choir sound, where one is never
louder than lovely, and it’s all very nicely packaged, and the i’s are dotted and
the t’s are crossed…. the building will tell me when I get there how the choir
85 Commentary booklet to The Complete Argo Recordings (Decca 2016), 70: a range of composers and performers comment on their experience of the acoustic. 86 Massing and Zeeman (2014), 364-7. 87 Webster (2000), 333 88 Boast of King’s DVD (1980). 89 Potter (2000), 161.
47
is meant to sound’.90 As Richard Causton (composer of the 2015 commission
The Flight) remarks, ‘this is a space into which sound must be offered, and in
which it is received’.91
As Willcocks points out, there are particular technical difficulties in learning to
adjust to a space in which the acoustic can vary by as much as five seconds
when it is full of people, compared to the emptiness of rehearsal.92 In order
not to sound muddy, ensemble singing in such a space requires extremely high
levels of accuracy and precision. Ledger comments that the resonant acoustic
helps with Renaissance music, ‘where you need clarity of parts and good
tuning’.93 A number of the recent King’s commissions are strongly rhythmic in
character and therefore play to that need for precision.
2.2 The treble voice and its cultural implications
So why did the treble become the sine qua non of the sacred choral tradition
epitomised by King’s? The role of recordings in the dissemination of that
sound, and the consequent vogue for a choral style of absolute tonal purity,
without vibrato but with immense clarity of diction, enables a discussion of
changes in performance practice and taste; through the availability of increasing
numbers of high quality recordings, these stylistic preferences have become the
norm for choral performance of sacred music in the secular as well as the
liturgical context.94
The criteria for what was and was not ‘fitting’ for church music were often
summed up in terms of ‘nobility’, ‘restraint’, and an avoidance of
‘emotionalism’.95 Thomas is dismissive of the continued argument among
90 Daily Telegraph, 29/5/18. 91 Massing and Zeeman (2014), 357. 92 Conversation between Willcocks, Ledger and Cleobury: Carols from King’s DVD (Opus Arte 2001) 93 Boast of King’s DVD (1980). 94 See Arnold (2014, 65ff) on the popularity of what he identifies as ‘sacred choral music’ in concert performance. 95 This language is explicitly employed in the 1948 Archbishops’ Commission report.
48
church musicians, at least through the first half of the century, that there was a
musical style which was ‘fitting’ for church composition. Thomas could helpfully
have pursued the implications of this argument for performance style as well as
compositional style. There is some justice to his argument that music for
liturgical use deserves more than a mere reductionist appeal to the utilitarian,
but he never seems to ask what sounds people want to hear in partnership with
the liturgy.
Part of the success of the carol service is undoubtedly that the association of
the treble with purity and childhood innocence combines in a particularly
potent way with nostalgic feelings about Christmas in general.96 Why there
should be this connection between perceived purity of vocal tone and
emotional response is the source of much debate. Ben Liberatore, whose
research applies modern sociological theories of gender and sexuality to the
world of cathedral music, links it with a sense of grief at the impermanence of
the treble voice: once lost, it can never be recovered.97 The same is true of
idealised perceptions of Christmas.
Liberatore’s research into gendered perceptions of the treble voice leads him
to suggest that ‘the discourse surrounding child choristers is not as much
about the voice as it purports to be’. He argues that the use of descriptions
such as “more divine than human” (Mould, 2007, p. 51), resembling the “pure
sound of the angels” (p. 25), ‘disembodied’ (Wood, 2000, p. 206), “sexless”
(Wood p. 30), “innocence, purity, and vulnerability" (Bridcut, 2001, ch. 9, para. 2)
are all, in various ways, questioning whether trebles are ‘real boys’: the sound
they make seems to transcend or subvert cultural expectations of masculinity,
to the extent that recruitment videos for choir schools go out of their way to
96 The listener survey of the 1966 Christmas Eve broadcast (KCAR/8/3/21/13) includes comments from several listeners to the effect that ‘the purity of the youngest choristers’ voices was one of the most moving sounds they knew’. 97 Liberatore (2016), 177-193. See also Nethsingha’s comment about the ‘fragility’ of the treble in Chapter 3.
49
stress the boys’ normality through emphasis on sport and technology.98 The
voices of girls and women do not transcend gendered expectation in the same
way- they are ‘supposed’ to be pure, in a way that boys and men are not, so it
is not difficult to project assumptions of purity onto the sound they make.
Day examines the role of shifting perceptions of class, gender, education and
prestige in the creation of the modern chorister, noting a change in the
occupation of chorister parents through the course of the 19th century.99
Before the foundation of the choir school, King’s choristers themselves were
college servants, and lay clerks were jobbing singers who worked in a number
of choirs; so the claims of social exclusivism implicit in critiques of the English
choral tradition by Boyce-Tillman and others show a lack of awareness of
history. Until relatively recently, the provision of music in church was either a
trade, performed by individuals of low status, or the work of volunteers.100
Varley Roberts, the organist at Magdalen College Oxford at the end of the 19th
century, wrote a manual for the training of parish choristers which includes
some remarks about class and accent which would now be considered
profoundly snobbish, but which were then probably indicative of the
backgrounds from which his choristers came.101 Ouseley was similarly
pessimistic about the possibility of drawing beautiful sounds from ‘mere
rabble’; this was a large part of his desire to found a school to train choristers,
not just musically but morally.102
98 Liberatore (2018). Several chorister recruitment videos currently available on YouTube (including one for King’s) support this argument. Die Thomaner, a documentary film about the choir of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, contains a lengthy sequence of a football match. Choristers are also shown playing computer games, and spending time with girlfriends: Liberatore comments that these efforts to establish the choristers as ‘normal’ boys paradoxically underline the assumption that singing is not a normal thing for boys to do. 99 Day (2014), 85. Mould (2007, 152) makes the same point; choristers were ‘typically recruited from the families of college servants or other poor homes’. 100 Orlando Gibbons was a sizar (chorister-servant) at King’s; although he was allowed to matriculate, his family background and education would not naturally have equipped him for undergraduate study and he left after a year : Massing and Zeeman (2014), 276. 101 Varley Roberts (1902), 1: he is dismissive of ‘vulgar’ and ‘rough’ tone. 102 Bland (2000), 49.
50
2.3 Not ‘all ooh wooh’: alternative treble sounds
Ashley’s research into factors which may inhibit boys from singing include a
reluctance to make a sound they consider, rightly or wrongly, to be
unmasculine.103 Ashley’s research into the physiology and sociology of boys’
voices connects his finding that boys don’t want to sing church music (because
they perceive it as being ‘all ooh wooh’), and especially not with the particular
vocal style and quality associated with King’s. Unless they have been trained as
choristers, adolescent boys are unlikely to identify this as a sound they want to
make. 104
Discomfort with the gender implications of the treble sound made by boy
choristers is nothing new: Day points out similarly that during the Victorian era
choral singing, and music in general, was not considered a sufficiently manly
pursuit for those of more exalted social status to wish to undertake it.105
Frederick Ouseley, founder of St Michael’s College Tenbury, had to struggle
with the expectations of his aristocratic family before being allowed to study
music.
The ‘Continental’ style, associated with Sir Richard Terry at Westminster
Cathedral, and later with George Guest at St John’s College, Cambridge, is not
only perceived as more masculine than the high ‘cathedral’ tone; it also
establishes an alternative to the King’s sound.106 Like Wesley and Mendelssohn,
Terry, too, was dismissive of the sound made by boy trebles: ‘whenever and
wherever boys are employed it is safe to say that the sound is raucous and
horrible’; it is not perhaps unsurprising that even when working with boys, he
encouraged them to develop a different kind of tone.107 While Guest is
103 Ashley (2008, 50) describes boys’ unease when their singing is called ‘beautiful’. 104 Ashley (2009), 149. In contrast to Ashley’s findings among British boys, early on in the Thomaner DVD the youngest probationers, aged 9, compete to see who can sing highest (the winning note is D’’’). 105 Day (2014), 85. 106 Ashley (2008), 6. 107 Terry (1929), 105.
51
explicit about the fact that he wanted his trebles to inhabit a different
soundworld from that of King’s (a decision driven in part by the very different
acoustic of St John’s chapel), his autobiography acknowledges the impact of
King’s in establishing a norm for him to react against.
• Musical extract 2: Up, good Christen folk, and listen from Christmas at St
John’s (St John’s College Choir/Guest 1974)
In this recording, the treble tone audibly contributes very differently to the
balance of the ensemble. Individual voices can be heard within the texture, in a
way which would not have been considered acceptable at King’s. Guest wanted
his boys to develop an ‘oboe voice’, with more vibrato and tremolo, along with
the ‘flute voice’ he identified as more typical of King’s, and which shapes
popular expectation of the boy treble.108 Guest’s most recent successor,
Andrew Nethsingha, draws a similar analogy when speaking about recording
Vaughan Williams’ sacred music with St John’s choir in 2018: ‘[Vaughan
Williams’] ear for orchestral colour in a choir is amazing…. we can decide
whether a solo top line should be an oboe, flute or violin, or whether tenors
and basses should be horns or cellos’.109 If trebles have perfected both kinds of
voice, they can adjust their style to suit the repertoire.
Although Guest’s personal preference is for ‘tremolo and slow tempi’, creating
a very different sound from that of King’s at the same period, he found Ord’s
choir ‘awesome in its nearness to perfection’.110 Yet he was not alone in
wanting his choir to sing in a different, ‘freer’ way. George Malcolm at
Westminster Cathedral described King’s as having ‘the emasculated quality of
an angel on a Christmas card’.111 Stephen Cleobury, who had been organ
108 Guest’s approach to vocal training, tempi and tone colour is set out at length in his autobiography (1994), 141-150. 109 Andrew Nethsingha, discussing the Signum Classics recording of Vaughan Williams’ liturgical works (SIGCD 541, 2018) in Choir and Organ, May/June 2018, 40. 110 Guest (1994), 16. 111 Massing and Zeeman (2014), 361.
52
scholar at St John’s under Guest before going on to Westminster Cathedral,
was well versed in that soundworld before his arrival at King’s, but he was also
steeped in the English cathedral tradition, having been a chorister at
Worcester. Day suggests that Cleobury has managed to combine ‘the colour
and vibrancy of the so-called Continental style with the blend and unanimity of
the English’ in a way which enables them to sound ‘less floaty and more like
earthlings’.112
There are numerous other examples of trained trebles singing the same
repertoire as at King’s, but with a different vocal quality. By the 1980s, the
choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, which had sung with a King’s-like cathedral
tone under Bernard Rose, was producing a more embodied, masculine sound
during the tenure of John Harper. Harper’s recordings of the English Anthem
from 1986 (Regis RRC 2031) demonstrate a variety of treble sound, depending
on the age of the piece being sung. Throughout the series, however, Harper’s
trebles sound like children, not like disembodied angels, and male children at
that: there is no possibility of mistaking this for a choir of girls, as can happen
with cathedral choirs today despite the protestations of those who insist there
is an audible difference.113
The choir of Temple Church in London will forever be associated with the first
‘superstar’ treble, Ernest Lough. His two recordings of Hear my prayer (1927
and 1928; the second became necessary because the first one was so popular
that the wax impression wore out) brought the treble voice into prominence
before King’s had recorded anything. A generation later, Ernest’s son Robin
was singing in the same choir, alongside his father, with an equally rich,
individual tone which could never be mistaken for a King’s treble.
112 ibid., 361. The description ‘earthlings’ comes from John Rutter. 113 Mould (2007), 269.
53
• Musical extract 3: Magnificat in C by George Thalben-Ball (Temple
Church/Thalben-Ball 1961), solo treble Robin Lough.
Liberatore comments that the sound which has become ‘normative’ for English
trebles can be produced equally well by boys or girls, if they have been given
the same training from the same age. He points instead to a contrast in sound
quality between trained and untrained treble voices. Contemporary
experiments in choral outreach such as Peterborough Cathedral’s Even You
Song, a 2016 collaboration between composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, the
cathedral choir and children from four local schools, illustrate the difference.
• Musical extract 4: ‘Collects’ from Even You Song by Cheryl Frances-Hoad
(Peterborough Cathedral Choir/Grahl, with children’s choir)
The trained voices of the cathedral trebles are given parts with a higher
tessitura than the children’s choir; they sing more legato and without
breathiness. In a piece focused around a voyage to the moon, trained trebles
are used to illustrate flight and detachment from the earth, until in the final
movement they reach a pitch which is then extended yet further by the
organ’s highest notes.114 In this example, there is an audible contrast between
the trained voices at the beginning of the track and the untrained
schoolchildren who join in at around 2:01 (singing the part of a cat going into
space). They sing with considerable energy, but lack precision in the intervals
between high and low notes.
The contrast between untrained children’s voices and the unchildlike
perfection of the trained treble has long been of interest to composers.
Recordings made of the rehearsals for the first performance of Britten’s War
Requiem in 1963 capture him telling the boys’ choir from Highgate School
(which included a young John Rutter) ‘don’t make it sound nice; it’s horrid, it’s
114 Even You Song (First Hand Records 2017).
54
modern music!’115 Yet the sleeve notes to the Decca recording which was
issued of the same performance commented of the boys’ sound that it was
‘suspended in limbo: innocent and pure-sounding but totally divorced from
breathing human passion’.116 Palmer also comments that this ethereal quality is
unusual for Britten, ‘whose children are generally very much of the down-to-
earth and here-and-now’. Morehen asserts likewise that ‘Britten much
preferred the more robust Continental style of voice production, which was
[then] virtually unknown outside Westminster Cathedral’.117
The ‘remote’ sound of the boys in the War Requiem was deliberately achieved
through positioning away from the main chorus and orchestra, and reflects the
terrible contrasts between the reality of war and the beauty of the traditional
liturgy (the same contrast which led Milner-White to adopt Truro’s carol
service for use at King’s, to speak to a post-war generation disillusioned with
conventional religion) but it also reinforces the association between the treble
voice and disembodiment. The idealised treble is, as Liberatore comments, not
a real person at all but a construct. Being able to sing inhumanly high notes is
part of a complex web of expectations placed on trebles, that they in some
sense transcend childhood and even humanity itself, replacing messiness and
physicality with perfection.118 Harper’s trebles and the children’s choirs as
more normally deployed by Britten (for example in Noye’s Fludde) and Frances-
Hoad give the lie to this projection, but the King’s trebles are seldom allowed
to drop their mask: Birtwistle’s The Gleam (2003) was a rare opportunity for
them to shout and stamp in the context of the liturgy.
115 Sound recording of rehearsal of the War Requiem, accessed via YouTube 30/4/18. 116 Christopher Palmer, liner notes to War Requiem (Decca 414 383-2), 1963. 117 The Treasury of English Church Music (EMI Classics, vol. 5, track 12) includes a 1967 recording of Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin with the choir of Westminster Abbey under Douglas Guest. 118 Liberatore (2018).
55
2.4 ‘Sacred music’ and adult choral sound
The quintessential ‘white’ or ‘silvery’ sound associated with King’s is no longer
its sole prerogative. David Wulstan’s research into the kind of ‘high, clear
voice’ required to sing Tudor repertoire proved hugely influential on vocal
technique in the latter half of the twentieth century, and contributed to the
formation of expectation about what singing ‘should’ sound like.119 There is a
clear correlation between the kind of pure, vibrato-less sound which was
already associated with King’s, and that which emerged from Wulstan’s Oxford
through groups like the Clerkes of Oxenford, the Tallis Scholars, and the
Sixteen. All these choirs still sing in this style. While Filsell argues that ‘mature
voices will never sound like boys’, Phillips remarks that ‘the young and
untrained sound [of undergraduate voices, which entered the world of choral
singing through Mann’s pioneering of choral scholarships in the 1920s] is the
one which has now established itself in most people’s minds as the ideal for
polyphony’.120
Though these latter groups employed adult sopranos rather than child trebles,
the Tallis Scholars’ famous recording of the Allegri Miserere lists Alison Stamp
as ‘solo treble’, because that more accurately describes the pitch and ‘clean’
vocal tone of this particular performance, which is very much in the English
early music tradition.121
• Musical extract 5: Allegri Miserere (Tallis Scholars/Phillips 1980), solo treble
Alison Stamp
What most clearly differentiates these choirs from King’s, then, is not their
tone, but the fact that the top line is produced not by boys but by adult
119 Wulstan (1985), chapter 8. 120 Phillips (2005), 497. 121 Phillips discusses at some length the implications of pitch for voice type and associated issues in performance practice. As he acknowledges, ‘in the end I went for an ideal sound, and then looked for ways to construct it’ (2005, 500).
56
women, who may also contribute to the alto line. In his comprehensive Music
of the English Church, Long was able to remark as long ago as 1971 that
recordings had made obsolete the ‘old type hooty, wordless cathedral alto’.122
Long would have been horrified to imagine their place being taken by women:
‘we must never forget that church music was specifically designed for the
impersonal and unemotional tone-colour of an all-male choir of boys and men
singing in a large, echoing building.’123 Nevertheless, the rise of ‘sacred music’
outside the liturgical tradition has allowed women to sing this repertoire and
produce a different sound- which may in turn have helped to break some of
the taboos around gendered music in church, so that female choristers, lay
clerks and even precentors are seen as valid heirs and interpreters of the
tradition.
Phillips identifies three choral sounds which emerged during the 1970s. One
was the all-male cathedral choir, whose older tenor and bass lay clerks perhaps
did not (and do not) sing as ‘straight’ as the upper voices, ‘particularly at the
extremes of their registers’. Secondly, there were the professional choirs such
as the BBC Singers, who were likely to have had conservatoire training. The
third sound was that of the ‘youthful… amateur’ undergraduate who sang in
groups like the Clerkes of Oxenford. Perhaps surprisingly, it was this last
sound which became the ‘blueprint’ for the concert performance of sacred
music. 124 The King’s sound owes something to the fact that young choral
scholars sing with a less developed tone than older lay clerks: but, as Phillips
comments of Oxbridge choirs generally, the energy and freshness of younger
voices is offset by a less mature sound lacking stamina and projection. The
men’s voices are expected to sound with the same controlled ‘white’ tone as
122 Long (1971), 390. 123 ibid., 391. 124 Phillips (2005), 497.
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the trebles. This can sometimes militate against a sufficient depth and richness
of sound in the lower registers.
2.5 The role of recording and broadcasting
One of the most obvious ways in which King’s has contributed to the
development of church music, both in terms of repertoire and in establishing a
‘gold standard’ of vocal performance, is through its commitment to broadcasts
and recordings. The King’s carol service has been broadcast since 1928, at first
only in the UK but later worldwide, thus creating an ‘ideal’ sound to which
other choirs aspire.125
King’s were not the first choir to record extensively: that distinction belongs
to the choir of St Andrew’s, Wells Street, which produced 32 records in the
first decade of the 20th century.126 It was the development of ‘commercially
viable microphones’ in the 1920s which made the difference to recording
quality- and, crucially, made it possible to record a choir in situ for the first
time, complete with the resident organ and natural acoustic, rather than in a
studio. It was perhaps the wartime broadcasts of Choral Evensong, many of
which were from King’s (albeit anonymously, for security reasons), which
established that particular sound in people’s minds; it has also been argued that
these broadcasts, representing a tradition continuing in adversity, became a
quintessential ‘sound of Britishness’.127 During the Second World War, when
broadcast venues were not publicised for security reasons and only identified
as ‘somewhere in England’, King’s was one of a very small number of choirs
125 Day (2000a), 100, instances the 1962 King’s/Willcocks recording of Haydn’s ‘Nelson’ Mass): it had never been recorded before, so was not well known, but ‘suddenly every choral society in the country wanted to do it’. 126 Colin Brownlee, Cathedral Music 18/1, p. 11. 127 Brownlee, ibid., 12.
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which were still regularly used, so that its sound also became (however
subconsciously) associated with the war effort.128
As Day points out, ‘the King’s sound’ is consistently recognisable; but
recordings from different eras, under different Directors of Music, prove
conclusively that there is not one single, static King’s sound, but a gradual
evolution.129 Listening to recordings of the choir between 1954 and the
present day reveal some consistent stylistic features (an absence of vibrato,
extreme clarity of diction, precision and balance between the voice parts), but
also some significant variations. The most obvious example is in the observance
of tempi. The TV broadcast of the 1954 carol service demonstrates how very
much slower were Ord’s tempi than those usually used today; it is possible
that the slower tempo may have felt more naturally reverent to the
participants.130 A commemorative set of CDs, released by Decca to mark
David Willcocks’ death and covering his entire tenure at King’s, reveals a
gradual increase in tempi through the 1960s and 1970s. Part of this may be due
to improvements in recording techniques in the complex acoustic of King’s
chapel: in one or two of the earlier Decca carol recordings, there is a
discernible lag between the choir, organ and congregation- in one case almost
a beat and a half- as they pass in procession between microphones in different
parts of the chapel. The body of recordings made throughout Willcocks’ time
show how diction, pronunciation and speed altered even within his own
tenure: Willcocks himself attributes this shift to the requirements of singing
with orchestral instruments as well as the organ.131 Cleobury’s tempi are
faster still, yet without losing the clarity necessary to understanding the sung
text.
128 ‘Not even the Luftwaffe could silence Choral Evensong’: Brownlee, ibid., 11. 129 Massing and Zeeman (2014), 352. 130 60 Years of King’s DVD. 131 Day (2000b), 129.
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Another major contribution King’s has made has been in the performance and
dissemination of new repertoire, and the use of different languages in addition
to English. It is disconcerting to realise how recent is the influence of church
music from the rest of Europe on the English cathedral and collegiate
repertoire. King’s was no exception.132 The amount of European music sung at
King’s increased appreciably after Cleobury’s arrival there, but that was not
until the 1980s. While it would now be normal practice for cathedral and
college choirs to sing in a range of languages, this was far from the norm in the
1960s.133 Willcocks’ recordings with King’s through the decade include
English-language versions of Bach’s St John Passion and, famously, the Allegri
Miserere with Roy Goodman as treble soloist.
2.6 Professionalisation and perfectionism in church music
At the same time, the existence of recordings created a pressure by setting an
objectively observable standard which then had to be emulated every time.134
This placed increased expectations not only on the best choirs, but also on the
less exalted, that they too should be able to sing new music and set themselves
more challenges. This in turn raised expectations on those choirs which had
been accepted as setting the standard: if the grassroots standard is going up,
the standards at the top also need to go up, and so on in a rising spiral. The
excellence demanded of King’s, and increasingly throughout the twentieth
century of other cathedral and collegiate choirs, resulted in the emergence of a
distinctive aesthetic of performance and rising skill levels, necessary to perform
132 The introduction of European sacred music into the repertoire of the cathedral and collegiate choirs is surprisingly recent. During his tenure at Westminster Cathedral, R.R. Terry was understandably concerned that a Catholic cathedral should sing Catholic music from across the whole breadth of the Church. 133 James Lancelot, who became a chorister at St Paul’s in 1961, remarks that even repertoire written in Latin (such as Palestrina and Byrd) was sung in English (Church Music Quarterly, December 2017), 11. 134 Although Ernest Lough’s initial recording of ‘Hear my prayer’ was so popular that he had to re-record it the following year (see above, p. 52), most recordings do not tend to be listened to over and over. With the exception of a few ‘iconic’ recordings such as the aforementioned Allegri Miserere of 1961, most church music will have an even smaller circulation- but the possibility of being measured against a recording for accuracy, tone or interpretation remains.
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the newer repertoire. The growing familiarity of the listening public with a
wider range of sacred repertoire also had an impact, as they became more
aware of what such pieces ‘should’ sound like. All of these factors have
resulted in an increased pressure to approach church music in a more
professional way.
Even the treble soloist who begins Once in Royal David’s City is to some extent a
professional musician: James Lancelot, former King’s organ scholar and organist
at Durham for 30 years, comments that choristers ‘do an adult’s job at a child’s
age’.135 The consistent reputation for excellence which King’s has been able to
maintain since Ord’s day is in large part due to the fact that the choristers can
practice twice a day, and more intensively during school holidays. Both Ord
and Willcocks brought their expertise in other genres of music to bear on the
role of director of music at King’s. They clearly did not feel that music for
liturgical use in church should be written or performed to a lower standard
than the rest of the repertoire. On the contrary, the excellence and
professionalism they had developed in other spheres was applied to their work
with King’s, and from there reached other churches and cathedrals via
broadcasts, recordings and published music.
As we have seen, Erik Routley traces the move to a more 'professional' style of
church music to Parry and Stanford, in that they wrote in much the same idiom
for the church as they would have for any other context and didn't 'dumb
down' their style simply because they were writing for the liturgy. The fact that
this was music for a specific purpose and context did not affect its stylistic
complexity. On the contrary, Routley argues that, as established composers in
135 Lancelot, Cathedral Music 18/1, 6.
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more than one genre, Parry and Stanford were consciously using the idioms of
their day to make church music more interesting to other serious musicians.136
In fact, it is possible to argue that the roots of a more professional approach go
back even further. It was S.S. Wesley who first attempted, in his Few Words on
Cathedral Music (1849), to set out a measurable standard for the recruitment,
training and rehearsal of cathedral musicians in order to improve the standard
of musical performance. The heart of Wesley’s argument was that ‘only the
best is good enough for God’ and that Christian amateurism, however well-
intentioned, too easily becomes an excuse for incompetence. Although some
of his recommendations were unrealistic (for example, the suggestion that a
cathedral organist should be selected by a panel of seven other organists), and
few if any would now agree with his assessment of his father, Samuel Wesley,
as the equal of Tallis, many of Wesley’s other recommendations have proved
to be visionary.137
The emergence of the RSCM (previously SECM), which aimed to develop and
resource music in parish churches; and the parallel development of the
Cathedral Organists’ Association, founded in 1919 to improve the skills and
standing of cathedral musicians, owes much to the vision of Sydney Nicholson.
He saw cathedrals having something to offer not just to the rest of the church,
but to each other; Nicholson’s idea was that cathedral musicians should no
longer be content to live in silos of isolated perfection, but to encourage each
other and listen to what each other were doing, resourcing and encouraging
the sharing of new ideas at all levels. In some ways this embodies Wesley’s
aspirations in his Few Words (a mere 70 years earlier!), but in a more practical
and achievable form.
136 Routley (1964), 20. 137 Among his suggestions for ways to improve standards are a residential college for church musicians, which bore fruit (albeit in a slightly different form) through the eventual foundation of the RSCM, and a more systematic approach to the recruitment, training and deployment of cathedral organists, whose recommendations were taken up by the Cathedral Organists’ Association, founded in 1919.
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There was a further move towards professionalisation in the 1950s and 1960s.
Serious secular composers like Walton, Tippett and Britten wrote serious
music for the church despite their own struggles with, or even hostility
towards, the claims of Christian faith.138 At the same time, the Willcocks
recordings mark a new era in church music, in that one choir was establishing
itself and its sound as a benchmark for performance which was readily available
to anyone without travelling to Cambridge to hear it in situ.
Like Ord’s operatic experience, Willcocks’ involvement with the Royal College
and the Bach Choir (which he directed from 1960 while still at King’s) gave him
extensive experience of working with professional orchestras and choirs
outside the potentially narrow world of church music. This ensured that there
was an instant overlap between the worlds of church music and of secular art
music. This in turn enabled the musical expectations and standards prevalent in
the wider world to take root also in Willcocks’ own performances and
compositions for the church.
Timothy Hone, secretary of the Cathedral Organists’ Association, suggests that
a further process of professionalisation of standards in British cathedral and
collegiate choirs took place in the 1980s.139 It was under Cleobury that the
tradition already established at King’s by Ord, Willcocks and (comparatively
briefly) Ledger, reached new heights of professionalism. He built up the choir’s
ability to deal with new challenges and thereby gave them the confidence to
sing repertoire that few choirs could or would aspire to. It is at that point that
it became routine to expect to include music in other languages in the
repertoire, along with the rediscovery of much pre-Reformation music.140
138 Morehen asserts that ‘neither Britten nor Walton were particularly enamoured of writing for the church’ (sleeve notes to A Treasury of Church Music, EMI Classics 2011, 18) 139 Personal communication, 22/5/16. 140 Lancelot comments that when he was a treble (at St Paul’s) in the 1960s, European repertoire was unusual in English cathedrals (Cathedral Music 1/18, 6-9). The Willcocks recordings throughout the 60s and 70s suggest that when such works were performed, it was usually in English.
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It is interesting to note that King’s’ recordings of music outside the repertoire
which is most readily associated with their particular sound have not always
received the same level of acclaim as those pieces that are more identified with
the ‘English cathedral’ style.141 This raises the possibility that there is also a role
for the audience or congregation in creating the sound choirs make: once
trained to expect a particular sound, that becomes the sound they will
demand, and will criticise if performances deviate from it.
Hone argues further that the stylistic choices which need to be made in
response to the preferred or expected sound have created a series of binary
pairs, creating lines of division along which the tradition develops. We have
already examined the different vocal sounds created by a division between
English and Continental styles. In terms of sound alone, King’s is undeniably
and instantly identifiable as representative of the English choral tradition, but in
terms of repertoire it was drawing on a mixture of influences much earlier
than most choirs did.
Divisions between Protestant and Catholic musical soundworlds have been
influential in shaping the English choral tradition for centuries, from the ‘one
syllable one note’ compositional style associated with Merbecke to the
developments at Westminster Cathedral under Terry, which were
instrumental in reintroducing English Renaissance music to the choral
repertoire. What effect did this broadening of repertoire have on the vocal
sound of choirs who sang it? Mould questions whether it is either possible or
appropriate to sing Messiaen, Poulenc, Janacek, Brahms, Mendelssohn with the
same ‘bloodless, white’ sound as Byrd and Tallis.142
141 For example Credo (EMI 56439 2,1997), a disc of music by Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Penderecki and Panufnik, which was criticised in the press for its restraint and lack of variety in vocal colour. 142 Mould (2007), 222.
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Perhaps controversially, Hone suggests a third binary pair: between ‘emotional’
and ‘inhibited’ performance.143 Attitudes to the role of emotion in
performance have changed markedly over the last century: whereas the
earliest recordings tend towards a more openly romantic style which appeals
directly to the emotions, the fashion more recently has been for coolness and
restraint. Day argues that this allows the listener to shape their own response,
rather than have it dictated by performance style.144 Ord did not come to
King’s via the traditional route from the organ loft or choir stall, but from the
opera house, where emotional engagement is de rigueur. However, in church
he was unhappy about the risk of personal interpretation, to the extent that he
actively discouraged choral scholars from taking singing lessons in case their
more developed soloistic voices disturbed the blend.145 A further marker of
professionalisation in church music is that singing lessons are now routinely
offered as part of a scholarship package in collegiate or cathedral choirs.
The King’s sound is definitely located at the restrained end of the spectrum.
Whereas the treble tone associated with King’s can be described approvingly
as clean, pure, otherworldly and ethereal, critics of the sound describe it as
sterile, cold, lacking in passion, inexpressive, impersonal, barren and under-
interpreted. Even supposedly neutral descriptions such as ‘mathematical’ and
‘meticulous’, in the context of something as innately personal and direct as the
singing voice, have a pejorative edge.146
It can be argued that the more restrained style perfected at King’s is because
the acoustics of the chapel demand a very precise sound, requiring high levels
of control; Cleobury did not ask for that kind of restraint during his time at
Westminster Cathedral, for example, nor could the sopranos of the BBC
143 Day (2000 and 2018) draws similar conclusions. 144 Day (2000b), 151. 145 Day (2014), 352. 146 Day (2000b), 123.
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Singers during his tenure be mistaken for trebles. But when working with the
King’s acoustic, Cleobury applies the same measures of perfection in
performance to the European repertoire as he does to the English music which
was indeed written to elicit that kind of sound: the same kind of perfection
which arguably leaves little space for personal interpretation.
As we have seen, the elevation of King’s to the epitome of the English choral
tradition illustrates the steady increase in standards and expectations in church
music more generally since the nineteenth century. As King’s came to typify a
more professional approach and a particular kind of vocal sound, however, it
also had to bear a consistent expectation of almost unreal perfection,
bordering on the inhuman. The demands made on quite young children to
perform to a high level, under a great deal of pressure and public scrutiny,
produce undeniable results- but it can also be argued that the sound of a King’s
treble is an artificially manufactured one.
If Guest’s trebles were oboes, perhaps Cleobury’s are organ flue stops.
Although (unlike Willcocks) he was too young to have had the army training
which was so influential on the discipline of generations of choirs, he did and
does share the natural tendency of many organists towards perfectionism in
every detail. Critics of the ‘impersonal’ tone associated with the King’s sound
have suggested that that the almost inhumanly high standards of which King’s
choir was capable in the 1980s and 1990s were due to an equally ‘inhuman’
style of direction, in which the choir director ‘plays’ the choir as if the
individual voices were the keys and pedals of an organ; expected to respond in
the same way every time, to the same level of machinelike accuracy. The choir
knows exactly what sound it is to make on every note, exactly where to
breathe and pause.147 Although this may be something of an exaggeration,
147 If this sounds unduly critical, it is worth remembering that Britten was equally precise about the sound he wanted to achieve, and equally directive in ensuring his singers produced it.
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Cleobury would certainly not be alone in thinking ‘instrumentally’ about the
voice. While Guest and Nethsingha saw this in terms of vocal colour, James
MacMillan has explored the possibilities of voice as instrument in more depth.
In a lecture to composition students at the University of York, MacMillan
spoke about the ‘voice as virtuoso’, detached from words or song. His
exploration of extended vocal techniques such as singing with closed mouth,
with high tessitura and extended range, has been informed by his experience of
electronic and orchestral music.148
Commenting on his own experience as an organ scholar at King’s under
Willcocks, James Lancelot remarks that ‘his ability to give the impression that
the world would come to an end if the performance was not perfect could be
a bit wearing’.149 In an article describing his time as organ scholar at King’s in
the mid-1980s, quite early in Cleobury’s tenure, Stephen Layton describes a
similar pressure to perform with absolute accuracy of timing, tuning and
ensemble, and the effect this had on his confidence. He makes the interesting
observation that he did not feel under the same pressure as a conductor and
choir director as he did when performing himself.150 Layton’s reflection
suggests that Cleobury inherited this approach to the music at King’s, though it
is also fair to say that the reputation of King’s by this time was such that it
probably created its own pressure through the sheer weight of expectation.
Layton also claims that he felt the music was often performed ‘for the glory of
man rather than the glory of God’. Cleobury would argue rather that the
pursuit of perfection- offering to God the very best of which one is capable- is
itself at the service of the worship; as is the music.
148 James MacMillan, lecture to the University of York, 21/2/17. 149 Lancelot, Cathedral Music 1/18, 7. Members of Lancelot’s own choir at Durham might suggest that he had internalised Willcocks’ approach rather more fully than this remark suggests. 150 Layton (2006), 77-88.
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Chapter Three: The history of the carol and its use in worship
For the vast majority of people who attend carol services, Christmas in the 21st
century is as much about tradition, security and familiarity, as it is about any
explicitly religious purpose or meaning.151 The balance between traditional and
familiar items on the one hand, and the commissions on the other, needs to be
carefully kept. Within the context of a service which taps into a deep popular
desire for the traditional and nostalgic, as carol services undeniably do, new
music can play a particularly important role. In this way, our understanding of
what constitutes a carol is expanded, but so too is our understanding of
liturgical music and its purpose.
The new music commissioned for King’s is original, but its originality is in
dialogue with the Christmas carol tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages
and beyond.152 Routley describes Milner-White’s adaptation of the Truro
service as ‘a fruitful example of the use of ancient liturgical form in a new
combination’; comparing it both to the Advent procession at King’s and the
now sadly defunct Epiphany carol service with procession at York Minster,
where Milner-White served as Dean after King’s. Routley identifies in their
reintroduction of the concept of movement as integral to liturgy a reference to
the origin of the carol in the mobility of dance.153
Now that the practice of singing hymns at funerals is beginning to die out, the
carol is probably the only form of church music ever encountered by the non-
regular-churchgoing population.154 Levels of churchgoing at Christmas remain
consistently higher than during the rest of the year.155 Giles quotes statistics
151 Claudia Pritchard, Independent on Sunday, December 2015, p.7 152 The earliest printed carol in English is the Boar’s Head Carol, dating to 1521, and some (such as the Coventry Carol) originate with mystery plays from a century or more before that; but a number of the King’s commissions (for example Nicholas Maw and James MacMillan) have drawn on even older texts. 153 Routley (1958), 232. 154 In his sleeve note to King’s On Christmas Day CD, Cleobury makes the distinction between Christmas as ‘holyday’ and the secular ‘holiday’ associated with the winter solstice. 155 Walker (unpublished PhD thesis, 2014): appendices 8, 9a and 9b.
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that 36% of the British population will attend a Christmas service in church,
and that those who do overwhelmingly wish it to be ‘traditional’.156 In this way,
although Giles’ statistics also show that less than half believe Christmas to have
anything to do with the birth of Christ, even the most secular members of
congregations stand at least some chance of encountering songs written to tell
the story of the incarnation of Christ. This chapter will briefly examine the
history of the carol, before looking in some detail at the background to the
King’s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, from its origins in Truro in 1880 to
the global phenomenon of the present day.
As Pritchard notes, carols collapse the distinction between sacred and secular
music.157 Thomas recounts how the SECM, precursor to the RSCM,
questioned the suitability for church use of those folk-originated hymn tunes
collected by Vaughan Williams and others for the English Hymnal (published in
1906).158 Even the most cursory examination of the history of the carol from
the Middle Ages, and its subsequent return to liturgical use, calls their
objection into question.
3.1 What is a carol?
Although Gant and Routley have both provided extensive research into the
cultural and musical history of the carol, it is difficult to reach a universally
agreed definition of what a carol is, and what it is not. This point will be
revisited in chapter 5 as part of the analysis of the King’s commissions. It is,
however, generally acknowledged that the name ‘carol’ was not confined to
music to be sung at Christmas, but referred to a song, usually with a burden-
refrain structure, which could be sung together by any group of people. More
156 Giles,Church Music Quarterly, December 2017) , 17 157 Pritchard, Independent on Sunday, 6/12/15, p.7 158 Thomas (2015); as he acknowledges, this may also have been a reaction against the perceived churchmanship of the volume.
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recently, the carol format has become indissolubly linked with music for the
Christmas season, especially that sung in churches or cathedrals.
Harper refers to carols as ‘sacred songs’ of non-liturgical origin, first adopted
into the liturgy as a means of teaching the Christian faith in an accessible
way.159 The teaching function of carols demands a distinction between popular
origin and popular destination: although they were used by mendicant friars as
an accessible teaching tool, to have survived in manuscript form at all required
someone literate to transcribe them, which implies that they could not be
popular in transmission, whatever their source. Stevens identifies three
categories of vernacular English carols of the fifteenth century, the first two
being ‘improving’ carols to edify the congregation, and exercises in ‘instructed
piety’ in which composers and singers give a voice to faith.160 From the
thirteenth century onwards, friars had a key role in combatting heresies which
denied the true humanity of Christ , in which vernacular preaching and popular
song both became vehicles for teaching. This may explain why so many carols
focus on aspects of the Incarnation.161 Since modern carol services are the
most likely form of liturgy to attract non-regular churchgoers, but do not
usually include a sermon, the carols still retain something of this instructive
function.
Stevens’ third category is examples of ‘formalistic brilliance’, designed to show
off technical ability. Critics of King’s might justifiably argue that the
commissions have perhaps tended too much to fall into the latter category.
Stevens uses the existence of this type of carol to argue against the assumption
that carols are necessarily a ‘reflection of popular aspiration’; although his
collection undoubtedly contains some simpler items, many are more complex
in texture, harmonic structure or technical difficulty than is commonly 159 Harper (1991), 291. 160 Stevens (1970), xiii 161 Stevens (1970), xiv.
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imagined.162 Stevens also questions the idea that carols are fundamentally a
secular folk art form. ‘The polyphonic carol is found predominantly in
manuscripts of church music and was, it is fair to presume, the exclusive
preserve of learned, ecclesiastical musicians.’ Nor is it true to say that
monophonic carols are necessarily any more ‘popular’ in origin; several
manuscripts of popular monophonic carols are from monastic sources and set
to Latin text.163
However, their exact relationship to the liturgy is still subject to debate. Gant
argues that the carol was initially a secular song form which contrasted with the
music sung in church.164 Harper acknowledges their ambiguity: ‘some carols
are found in sources alongside liturgical music and may have been used in the
liturgy (to substitute for other items such as Benedicamus) or else in the
refectory’.165 This suggests at best a para-liturgical function, albeit within a
monastic context. Yet a newly discovered 15th-century carol provides more
evidence for the possible use of carols within the liturgy. Parit virgo filium was
performed by Newcastle Cathedral Choir in 2018, after being recreated from
a single surviving voice part with pitch notations found on a 15th century
manuscript. The carol had been annotated to the bottom of a page of a service
book, which was then used to bind another manuscript (acquired by
Cambridge University Library in 1996). Professor Andrew Wathey of
Northumbria University, who found and transcribed the carol, commented
that it is not unknown to find polyphonic music written into service books
(which were otherwise confined to plainsong and liturgical text) but ‘this is the
162 Stevens (1970), xv. 163 Stevens (1970), xiv. 164 Gant (2014), 2. 165 Harper (1991), 291, my italics.
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only such instance involving a carol; it provides fascinating new evidence for
the use of carols in the Christmas liturgy in the 15th century’.166
Scholes points out that Puritan emigrants to America, at the time of the official
suppression of Christmas, for obvious reasons took no carols with them.167
English Puritanism, however, ironically ensured the survival of the carol by
driving it out of church on to the streets: Routley connects the carol with the
harnessing of ballad and folk song as a means of evangelism, for example by the
Wesleys.168 Similarly, the Victorian rediscovery of the carol was an attempt to
re-appropriate popular musical forms for worship. Throughout its history,
then, the carol has had a function in worship, but it has not always been the
music of the church.
Gant suggests that true carols are part of the oral tradition and never appear
in hymnbooks at all.169 In Tune with Heaven points out that before the
Reformation, congregational music in church was non-existent: hymns were a
later development, and the carol or sacred song was, paradoxically, not for use
in church but outside.170 The fact that carols were usually associated with
dancing made them unsuitable for liturgical performance.
Contrarily, it is sometimes claimed that the last genuine carol to have entered
the repertoire is While shepherds watched, which has a church rather than a folk
origin: it is a Protestant carol, a straight paraphrase of Scripture in metrical
form.171 However, the fact that it is still frequently sung in Yorkshire to the
166 https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/news/vc-carol/ accessed 17/1/19. 167 Scholes, 139. 168 Routley (1958), 85ff 169 Gant (2014), 10. 170 In Tune With Heaven (1992), 24. 171 Its first appearance is in Tate and Brady (1696).
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tune later associated with On Ilkley Moor baht ’at clearly illustrates its roots in
the folk tradition.172
Drage and Holman have studied the carol extensively within the context of
‘West Gallery’ music (more properly ‘psalmody’), which was gradually
rendered obsolete by the growth of Anglican cathedral-style choirs from the
middle of the nineteenth century.173 For Drage, carols are ‘Christmas metrical
texts which may have traditional roots’.174 This definition does not specify
form, origin or the location of performance, perhaps because all these are less
fixed than might be supposed, but it may well reflect what they had become by
the seventeenth century when the divide between ‘vernacular’ and ‘art’
performance in church really began to widen.175
To the average member of a carol service congregation, their definition of
‘traditional carols’ would include Victoriana such as O little town of Bethlehem or
Once in royal David’s city. Yet Victorian and later ‘carols’ are often more
accurately described as hymns, having been written expressly to be sung during
Christian worship in church.176 However, in terms of their text, Victorian
carols on both sides of the Atlantic were a new development, introducing
‘unbiblical’ imagery of winter, snow and firelight, before the rediscovery of
mediaeval carols based (however loosely) on the Nativity.177
The publication of anthologies of what might be called genuinely traditional
carols began in the mid-nineteenth century. Among others, William Sandys’
collection of mediaeval texts, Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (1833)
172 cf. Peter Holman, liner notes to While shepherds watched: Christmas Music from English Parish Churches and Chapels, 1740–1830 (Hyperion, 2008), which includes several different versions of this carol. 173 See Drage (2009), 2, for an explanation of why ‘psalmody’ is to be preferred to ‘west gallery’ as a description of this genre 174 Drage (2009), 4. 175 Drage (2009), 3. 176 The order of service at King’s differentiates between hymns (sung by the choir and congregation) and carols (sung by the choir only). 177 Routley (1958), 31.
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became a major resource (not least of texts for 21st-century composers), and
the rediscovery of material of European origin, such as the Scandinavian Piae
Cantiones, further enriched the repertoire.178 Twentieth century collections
include the Cowley Carol Book (1916), the Cambridge Carol Book (1924), and the
Oxford Book of Carols (1928).
At the same time, collections of exclusively newer material such as Bramley
and Stainer’s Christmas Carols New and Old, which provided the majority of the
music for the first Nine Lessons and Carols service from Truro, slanted the
definition of the carol towards a more liturgical and devotional format.179
Citing the existence of carol-singers of the kind associated with Hardy’s
Mellstock Quire, the introduction to Bramley and Stainer posits a need for
‘some change of form’ in order to tidy the carol up for church use.180 The
Carols for Choirs series, beginning in 1961, synthesised the best of these
collections and provided new arrangements of both older and newer material.
Almost sixty years on from the ‘green book’ now designated Carols for Choirs 1,
carol publishing accounts for a significant proportion of the musical output of
OUP, Novello and Faber.
As a musical form, the Christmas carol is that which most readily bridges the
gap between ‘vernacular’ and ‘art’ music, or music for congregational
participation and music for specialist performance. Giles employs the word
‘vernacular’ in its literal sense to explore how macaronic carols- those which
alternate Latin liturgical texts with translations or glosses in other languages
(such as In dulci jubilo or Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin)- have roots both inside
178 Piae Cantiones originated in Finland in 1582, and entered the English repertoire in 1910, after J.M. Neale was given a copy as a gift. It is the source of some of the best-loved Latin carols, among them Personent hodie, In dulci jubilo, and Resonet in laudibus. 179 Bramley and Stainer (1871), reissued 1879. 180 Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree (London: Macmillan 1974)
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and outside the church. The carol, in a sense, ‘speaks both languages’, both
literally and culturally.181
Stevens’ seminal work on the mediaeval carol suggests that the burden-stanza
form was fixed to the identity of the true carol by the end of the Middle
Ages.182 He links them to the French virelai, Italian ballata and lauda: as these
names suggest, their deployment in processions and litanies retained the carol’s
origins in forms of movement such as the dance. Shaw likewise underlines their
origins in the dance, pointing out that ‘corolla’ or ‘caraula’ itself meant a ring-
dance.183 Other definitions point to simplicity, joyfulness, spontaneity and
wonder.184 In his introduction to the Oxford Book of Carols, Dearmer states that
‘the typical carol gives voice to common emotions in language that can be
understood and music that can be shared by all’.185
If carols are, strictly speaking, ‘music that can be shared by all’, the more
consciously populist approach of Rutter, Chilcott and Wilberg, following on
from that of Willcocks, has inherited the mantle of the true carol, in a way
which does not apply to the more demanding music of the King’s-style
commission. Likewise, the Carols for Choirs collection deliberately arranged
carols in such a way that they could be sung by congregations, rather than the
‘esoteric’ material in the Oxford Book of Carols. Newer collections such as
Novello’s Noel! series have largely tended towards a kind of middle ground: the
more accessible of the art-music kind of carol.
In chapter 1, we saw how King’s is deployed by opposing sides in the debates
surrounding aesthetics, excellence and elitism in church music. It is certainly
181 Giles, Church Music Quarterly (December 2017), 14-17. 182 Stevens (1970), xiii 183 Shaw, (1923), 20-24; Dearmer argues that by the fourteenth century the word had shifted from the dance itself to the tune of the dance- to which words were then attached (Preface to the Oxford Book of Carols, vii). 184 Coghlan (2016), 10, quotes the Victorian carol-collector W.W. Fyfe as saying that carols are ‘a song intended to mingle joy and wonder’. 185 Dearmer (1928), xi.
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arguable that through the popularity of Carols for Choirs, and especially the
Willcocks descants, King’s has been instrumental in taking them in an arguably
slightly more specialised and certainly rather more polished, art-music
direction than their origin would suggest. It can therefore be established that
the divergence between ‘church music’ and ‘other music’ posited by Thomas is
of very long standing, but that the carol is not the best illustration of that
division. Since its appropriation by the church in the nineteenth century, in fact,
the carol has largely swapped genre, its previous place as ‘popular seasonal
music’ having been taken by secular songs from Jingle Bells to Fairytale of New
York.186
The history of the carol has continued to develop. Along with the consistent
use of familiar tunes to convey Christian words, thus enabling the story to be
told and retained by succeeding generations, more recent innovations include
the descant, decorating and building on that familiar tune in a way that
stretches more able singers without putting off less confident voices. Gant
observes that descants were invented by nineteenth-century Anglo-
Catholics.187 Yet it was the descendants of the same Anglo-Catholic tradition
who produced the Oxford Book of Carols of 1928, which attempted to reclaim
the carol from the ‘synthetic’ material specially written for Victorian or
Edwardian sensibilities, as in Bramley and Stainer. It also returned to a wider
definition of the carol as a seasonal song, not merely for Christmas. In 1928,
the year of both the Oxford volume and the first King’s radio broadcast,
Walford Davies regretted the ‘decline of the carol’ and the ‘inertia which
prevents experimentation’ with the form.188 He need not have worried.
186 A point also made by Gant (2014) and Coghlan (2016). 187 Gant (2014), 218. 188 Coghlan (2016), 148.
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3.2 What is a carol service?
The preface to the 1879 edition of Bramley and Stainer remarks that ‘the time-
honoured and delightful custom of…celebrating the Birthday of the Holy Child
seems, with some change of form, to be rapidly gaining ground’, including in
cathedrals. Canterbury Cathedral held a Christmas Eve service in 1873, and
Winchester had a carol service in 1890.189 Newspaper accounts of the first
Truro service stated that ‘a like service has been instituted in other cathedrals
and large towns’, though without specifying what ‘like’ actually entailed.190
Gatens’ study of Victorian cathedral music refers to the ‘essential intimacy of
the Anglican choral service’.191 It was Milner-White’s explicit intention to turn
that ‘intimacy’ or inwardness on its head: the Carol Service was to be a gift for
the whole city, not just for members of the college in the way that the daily
office was (though it can be argued that the distinction he intended has long
since been lost, now that evensong at King’s is a tourist attraction in its own
right). Part of the recent resurgence in popularity of choral evensong in
cathedrals and colleges seems to be precisely that it does not demand active
participation or a particular response; carol services have something of the
same quality, while offering more opportunities to the congregation to sing,
and less potential confusion regarding when to stand, sit or kneel.
The innate liturgical structure of the carol service is sufficiently clear and
strong to contain even the least ostensibly carol-like of the commissions. At
the same time, some of the commissions, especially those which have been
repeated (either at King’s or elsewhere) have characteristics of the best
liturgical music, creating a soundworld within which to explore the boundaries
189 Barrett (1993), 124-6. 190 West Briton Gazette, December 1880. Similarly. W.J. Phillips (1922, vii) records how he established carol services at Westminster Abbey ‘which have been among the most largely attended of any special services’, suggesting that this was not a new phenomenon, but he does not describe their structure or content. 191 Gatens (1986), 14.
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of time and space: however simple, familiar or even banal the words, the
sentiment they express is eternal and universal.
In the strict sense, if ‘liturgy’ is restricted to the order of the Mass or the
divine office, carol services are not liturgy; but they do provide a simple
liturgical structure, beginning with a bidding prayer and ending with a blessing,
and centred around a recurrent pattern of readings alternating with musical
items, both congregational and choral. These services are the liturgical form
most likely to attract non-churchgoers; a certain predictability and familiarity in
both structure and content is part of the appeal.
A.C. Benson’s biography of his father states that the idea for a service at Truro
including nine lessons interspersed with singing derives from ‘ancient
sources’.192 Such sequences of lessons are clearly attested in the early church;
although Egeria’s account of worship in fourth-century Jerusalem does not
mention such a sequence taking place at Epiphany, which was then more
prominent in the calendar than Christmas itself, she does include references to
sequences of lessons at other feasts.193 In his survey of the Christian liturgical
year, Pfatteicher states that ‘the whole history of salvation is rehearsed in
readings and song’ at the Easter vigil: the resemblance to Milner-White’s ‘tale
of the loving purposes of God’ is inescapable.194
There is clear evidence for sequences of nine lessons at Matins on Sundays and
major feast days in the mediaeval Church: John Harper refers to a Matins of
Nine Lessons as ‘one of the variant orders in secular Matins’.195 Richard
Hoppin outlines an order for Matins including nine lessons, set in three groups
of three, each preceded by three psalms and followed by a responsory (see
192 Benson (1899), 471. 193 https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/liturgy-in-4th-century-jerusalem-the-travels-of-egeria/ accessed 15/1/19. See also Jungmann (1959), chapter 21, on the development of Christmas as a distinct season. 194 Pfatteicher (2014), 215ff. 195 Harper (1991), 88.
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Appendix 4).196 The shape of Nine Lessons and Carols as originally conceived
by Benson thus bears considerable resemblance to the overall structure
identified by Hoppin: the responsories become the short benedictions which
preceded each lesson until 1919, the psalms are replaced by hymns and carols.
Both Hoppin’s and Benson’s orders culminate in a canticle, though the Te
Deum proper to Matins becomes a Magnificat appropriate to an evening
service before disappearing altogether from the Milner-White version in 1919.
This again may have been due to a desire to make it less like a formal office,
and more appropriate to the needs of the city.
Routley posits that the format of alternating lessons and music is based on the
ancient service of Tenebrae, more usually connected with Holy Week, in
which there were also nine lessons, ‘interspersed with psalms and ending with
the Benedictus’. He acknowledges that the musical and liturgical mood of the
Christmas service is very different from that of Holy Week, but suggests that
the alternating structure of music and lessons had already proven itself to be
effective not only in telling a story, but also in creating a devotional
atmosphere in which to contemplate it.197
What kind of music does a carol service require? A 1966 Audience Research
project among listeners to that year’s radio broadcast from King’s revealed a
divided response, which is still reflected more than 50 years later.198 One or
two of the respondents were apparently put off by a service they saw as
‘traditional’ and ‘word-perfect’ to the extent that ‘it had ceased to have any
deep meaning for them’; another group, by contrast, felt that ‘the service
seemed to be moving away from the usual pattern, and that the familiar, well-
loved carols were being supplanted by modern ones which, in their opinion,
were less joyful, and did not express the Christmas spirit nearly so well’. A 196 Hoppin (1978), 100, table 7. 197 Routley (1968), 147. 198 Audience Research Report for the BBC on 1966 service: KCAR 8/3/21/13-)
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third group appreciated the mixture of old and new, but the strong reaction of
the ‘traditionalist’ group is worth noting- not least because the tradition they
were defending was at that point less than half a century old.
As Cleobury acknowledges, the fact that the King’s Carol Service is ‘iconic’
does not mean that it should become a museum piece untouched by changes in
culture and taste. It is built on traditional bedrock, but with new growth
expressly encouraged. The Oxford Book of Carols identifies five types of carol,
representing different stages of assimilation into the tradition.199 In his article
on the carol service in the Musical Times, Cleobury looks at the repertoire of a
typical service and gives examples of each type:
1) Traditional carols with their original tune (Nowell sing we)
2) Traditional carol tunes set to other old texts (Angels from the realms of glory)
3) Modern words written for, or adapted to, a traditional tune (O little town of
Bethlehem)
4) Traditional words set to a modern tune (Ord’s Adam lay y-bounden)
5) Modern words and music (George Mackay Brown’s Fix one star at last, set by
Peter Maxwell Davies as the 1984 commission).200
The King’s commissions obviously do not fall into the first three categories,
and they are sometimes difficult to categorise neatly within the final two. All
the music is necessarily new, but not all the texts are either modern or
‘traditional’; poetry and sermons make their appearance alongside liturgical
and devotional texts from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Counting
the liturgical portion of the text to Swayne’s Winter Solstice Carol (1998),
thirteen of the commissions qualify in the fourth category, including two
199 Dearmer (1928), xv. The five types correspond to the five sections into which the book is divided. 200 Cleobury (1988), 689.
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settings of the same mediaeval text: Ades’ Fayrfax Carol (1997) and Berkeley’s
This Endernight (2016).
Cleobury’s article was published in 1988, but perhaps surprisingly, only four
further commissions to date qualify as unambiguously by ‘modern writers and
composers’ to add to the Maxwell Davies, because their text is exactly
contemporary with the musical setting:
• The Angels (1994): Harvey/Taylor
• Winter Solstice Carol (1998): Swayne (although some of the text is
liturgical, it is interspersed with his own words)
• Offerings they brought of gold (2010): Rautavaara
• The Flight (2015): Causton/Szirtes
The word ‘traditional’ is almost certain to be mentioned in any discussion of a
carol service; as Day recounts, it was being applied to the service at King’s as
early as the 1930s. The precise boundaries of what constitutes ‘traditional’ are
somewhat blurred in the context of a service which is still only 100 years old.
However, the service contains a number of different levels of ‘tradition’. It is
impossible to think of one which does not include at least one example of
every generation of the evolution of the carol: from the mediaeval era of the
mystery play, through the seventeenth-century English of the King James Bible
in the readings, to the Victorian rediscovery (or reinvention) of Christmas, as
represented by most of the congregational items; to those items written within
living memory but whose addition to the repertoire was so seamless that they
seem to have been around forever, such as the Willcocks descants; and the
commissions and other contemporary works, to underline that this is very
much a living tradition.
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3.3 The history and impact of the Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols: Truro 1880
As is now well known, the Nine Lessons and Carols format was not invented
at King’s. It originated in Truro in 1880, in the wooden shed on the site of the
newly designated cathedral, then still under construction. Myth has it that this
was as a way of trying to keep people out of the pubs on Christmas Eve; the
first service of Nine Lessons and Carols began at 10pm rather than 3pm as it
does now.201 However, those associated with Truro now point out that the
men of the choir had traditionally sung carols in the town on Christmas Eve,
but in private homes, rather than in pubs.202 At any rate, this tradition of carol-
singing was brought back into church from 1878 at the instigation of the
cathedral Succentor, Somerset Walpole.
Although the phenomenon of carol services as such can be traced back before
this, Truro was the first to adopt the Nine Lessons and Carols format which
has proved so enduring.203 As we have seen, carol services per se were not
new; it was the addition of ‘nine tiny lessons’ by Bishop Benson which created
a successful liturgical framework for the music.204 Before each lesson was a
short spoken ‘benediction’, which were retained in the first King’s service of
1918 but were subsequently dropped in favour of the one-sentence summary
of the content of each reading: for example ‘God tells sinful Adam that by his
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed’.
Significantly, the Truro service was known as ‘nine lessons with carols’, which
suggests that the Biblical readings were the centre of the service; although
Stephen Cleobury still maintains that the lessons are at the heart of the service
201 Nash (2014), 324, and Routley (1958), both make reference to this. 202 Jeremy Summerly, The Story of Nine Lessons and Carols DVD 203 See Barrett (1993), for details of the musical and liturgical life of nineteenth-century cathedrals. 204 Nash, 324. The phrase ‘nine tiny lessons’ is from Benson’s son, A.C. Benson, whose friendship with Milner-White resulted in the service’s transposition to King’s.
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and the music has to serve the text, Milner-White’s renaming of the service as
‘Nine Lessons and Carols’ created an equality between word and music.205
However, the music for the inaugural Truro service comprised only four choir
carols, three extracts from Messiah, and two congregational hymns: Bethlehem
of noblest cities (now considered more suitable to Epiphany than Christmas) and
O come all ye faithful, which appears after the seventh lesson, the Prologue to St
John’s Gospel, now usually read as the ninth and final lesson.
For the 125th anniversary of the Truro service in 2015, the Director of Music,
Christopher Gray, attempted to recreate as closely as possible the original
order of service, which he found in the Cornwall county archives and
reproduced in facsimile to accompany the commemorative CD of the 2015
service, though some questions about the precise content still remain
unanswered.206 For example, no setting is specified for the Magnificat at the
end: Gray made an informed decision that a congregational setting to Anglican
chant was intended, but still had to make a choice from among the chants
available.207
The total of ten sung items, of which only seven were for the choir alone,
contrasts sharply with the twenty which now constitute the service at King’s.
Cleobury comments that while the word is still paramount to the modern
service, the musical choices made each year need to contribute something to
the sense of progression through the story, illuminating and enlarging on each
reading through music.208 This is not necessarily the first impression created by
the service in its modern iteration.
205 Cleobury (1988), 687, quotes Milner-White’s view that ‘the scriptures, not the carols, are the backbone’ and goes on to use the phrase which so annoys Martin Thomas: ‘the music [is the] handmaid of the liturgy’. See below, chapter 4.1. 206 Gray also comments ‘we haven’t sought to reproduce the authentic standard’ of the singing from 1880: the clear implication is that standards have risen considerably, a point which will be revisited in detail in chapter 3. 207 The chosen chant is by J.L. Hopkins. When the same order was adopted at King’s in 1918, the Magnificat was sung to the Collegium Regale setting in F by Charles Wood. 208 Coghlan (2016), ix.
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Many of the carols sung at that first Truro service are still in use today, albeit
in different arrangements; In dulci jubilo, for example, was sung to the
arrangement by Thomas Helmore in Bramley and Stainer’s Christmas Carols
New and Old, rather than the Richard Pearsall arrangement which appeared in
every King’s service between 1983 and 2016.209 Although the 1880 repertoire
now looks unadventurous, the Bramley and Stainer collection was then barely
a year old; it can therefore be argued that the inclusion of new material
alongside the traditional has always been normal practice at carol services.
Many of Bramley and Stainer’s carols have not survived to form part of the
contemporary repertoire. The material chosen for the first Nine Lessons and
Carols, however, is a different matter.210 Apart from the benedictions, the only
item from the initial Truro order which has not survived into common usage in
some form in the 21st century is another Bramley and Stainer carol, Charles
Hutchins’ Once again O blessed time.
• Musical extract 6: Once again O blessed time (Truro Cathedral Choir/Gray)
According to Routley’s English Carol, ‘the general dispersion of this rite’ beyond
Truro took place when Benson became archbishop of Canterbury in 1883.211
He was the last Archbishop to live at Addington Palace, later the home of the
RSCM, and he took an adapted form of the Nine Lessons and Carols with him
to Addington parish church; all the music was congregational, still from
Bramley and Stainer. Routley gives a sample order; again, all but one of the
carols (the once-popular ‘Like silver lamps’) are still in the repertoire today.212
209 The preface to Bramley and Stainer (1879 edn.) underlines the purpose of the collection: to create ‘a single source, easily accessible’. To this end it contains carols which ‘from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character, are unfit for use within the Church’. 210 The Truro commemorative CD is not the only one to have recorded Bramley and Stainer in the 20th century. See also The Victorian Carol, Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford/Harper (Abbey Recordings 1990) 211 Routley (1958), 230. 212 Ibid., 247.
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3.4 The Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s
The Anglican choral revival of the nineteenth century had rediscovered
plainsong and polyphony, with the purpose of adorning the liturgy and creating
a sense of the ‘beauty of holiness’. Unlike the Nine Lessons and Carols,
however, the intention behind the choral revival was not to alter the liturgy
itself. The carol service as devised by Benson and Milner-White was a careful
harnessing of tradition, but in order to create something new.
Until 1918, Christmas Eve at King’s had been marked with Evensong followed
by the singing of carols.213 It was on his return to King’s from service as an
army chaplain that Eric Milner White, who had experienced the Truro service
through his friendship with the son of Truro’s bishop, Edward Benson, reached
the conclusion that something different was needed. Milner-White was aware
that existing liturgies did not meet the emotional need of a people whose
every certainty had been shaken by the events of World War I. His intention
was to reintroduce them to the story of the Incarnation of Christ in a simple
and direct way through words and music. He wanted the service not only to
communicate with undergraduates and fellows returning from the trenches,
but also to serve as the college’s gift to the city, many of whose population had
also served and died. It was in this context that the Bidding Prayer, with its
invocation of those who are now ‘on another shore, and in a greater light’,
took shape. Although different forms of wording for the bidding prayer have
been tried at various points in the service’s history, the form currently in use
has now reverted to that created for the 1918 service.214
213 The separation between the office and the carols corroborates Harper’s speculation that in the mediaeval church carols might have been sung in place of the Benedicamus Domino, by way of a quasi-liturgical ending (1991, 291). 214 For example, the formulation ‘because this of all things would rejoice his heart’ was omitted for a number of years in the 1990s, before being reinstated in 2005.
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The order of service for the 1918 debut of the King’s service is as follows:215
Carol: Up, good Christen folk, and listen
Hymn: Once in royal David’s city (in procession)
Bidding Prayer
Lord’s Prayer
Hymn: A great and mighty wonder
Lesson 1 (Genesis 3: 8-15)
Carol: A virgin most pure
Lesson 2 (Genesis 22: 15-18)
Carol: Blessed be that Maid Marie
Lesson 3 (Isaiah 9: 2,6,7)
Carol: As up the wood I took my way
Lesson 4 (Micah 5: 2-4)
Hymn: While shepherds watched their flocks by night
Lesson 5 (Luke 1: 26-33, 38)
Carol: Unto us is born a son
Lesson 6 (John 1: 1-14)
Hymn: O come all ye faithful
Lesson 7 (Luke 2: 8-16)
215 King’s Archive CSV 103 contains a complete set of orders of service from 1919 onwards, with a photocopy of the order from 1918.
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Carol: O night peaceful and blest
Carol: Childing of a maiden bright
Lesson 8 (Matthew 1: 1-11)
Carol: In dulci jubilo (arr. Pearsall)
Lesson 9 (Galatians 4: 4-7)
Carol: The first Nowell
Magnificat (Charles Wood: metrical)
Salutation
Collect for Christmas Day
The Blessing
Recessional Hymn: Hark the herald angels sing
As now, it contains a mixture of congregational hymns, choir carols, and
readings from Scripture. The order of the carols has changed slightly, and the
majority are from a single source, the Cowley Carol Book, while congregational
items were taken from the English Hymnal.
From the beginning, the King’s carol service has made use of the newest
available publications as well as older material. In 1918 and 1919, material from
the newly available Cowley Carol Book (1916) was already being performed.
While the emphasis at Truro was on newly written material, King’s has from
the beginning maintained a balance between innovation and arrangements of
older material which rooted the service in musical history. In the 21st century,
it is also habitual for the order of service to contain references to the musical
inheritance of King’s itself: ‘Daddy’ Mann’s arrangement of Once in Royal David’s
City, Ord’s Adam lay y-bounden, Ledger’s Sussex Carol and I saw three ships,
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arrangements and descants by Willcocks and Cleobury all recur while the
commissions, for the most part, do not.
The order of several of the lessons has changed from that of 1918, as has the
identity of those chosen to read them, but the sequence has remained
unaltered since 1959. At Truro, John 1 was the seventh lesson; subsequent
readings from Galatians 4 and 1 John 5 develop the sequence from a narrative
account of the Nativity into reflections on ‘sonship’ and identity in Christ.
When the service was adapted for King’s in 1918, John 1 was the sixth lesson,
followed by Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of Christ’s birth, and again
culminating in Galatians 4. In 1919, however, John 1 became the ‘supreme
climax’ of the service, for which the congregation stood.216 It has remained in
that position ever since, a change which was subsequently adopted by Truro as
well as countless other imitators .
As at Truro, the 1918 service ended with the Magnificat, thus creating a bridge
between the formal structure of evensong and that of the carol service. The
Magnificat was dropped from 1919 onwards and ‘will not be restored’.217 Its
removal raises the question of the liturgical status of carol services. The
bidding prayer, readings, intercession and blessing ensure that the carol service
has a clear liturgical structure, but without a canticle it is not a formal office:
while Milner-White saw it as an ‘occasional’ service (that is, separate from the
prescribed round of canonical worship, to which he hoped to add ‘colour,
warmth and delight’), it is now more readily identifiable as a Service of the
Word.218 Its derivation from the structure of the mediaeval monastic office is
clear enough to connect it to the tradition.
216 Nash (2014), 337. Other changes to the readings are detailed by Nash on p.339. Routley (1958) also tracks these changes and contrasts them with the order adopted at Addington, then home to the RSCM, which preserved the original Truro order unaltered. 217 Cleobury (1988), 689; though Andrew Carter’s Mary’s Magnificat has been sung at least once. 218 Nash (2014), 333.
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Routley comments that ‘of the carols sung in 1919, only one (In dulci jubilo) was
sung in 1957’.219 This change was implemented slowly, with one or two items
a year being replaced. One immediately noticeable change is that the 1918
service did not begin with the solo verse of Once in Royal David’s City, which
epitomises the entire Nine Lessons and Carols for many listeners. Every
service since 1919 has begun with Once in Royal, though it took a few more
years to introduce the solo verse.220 Andrew Nethsingha, Director of Music at
Truro from 1994-2002, suggests that the ‘fragility’ of the solo treble voice in
this context represents the fragility of the Christ Child.221 Following a war in
which so many had died, the poignancy of the treble sound also represents not
just the fragility of a single voice, but of an entire generation. 222
It was arguably only when the service was first broadcast on radio at Christmas
1928 that the Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s began to realise its full
potential as a symbol of, and resource for, English choral music. Day describes
the process by which the King’s Nine Lessons became accepted, surprisingly
rapidly, as a tradition; it was being so described in the press as early as 1932,
when it had only previously been broadcast three times (there was no
broadcast in 1930) and had only been performed at King’s for fourteen
years.223
The advent of television developed that potential yet further. The first
televised Nine Lessons and Carols took place in 1954, only three years before
Willcocks’ return to King’s. It was not followed up for a number of years, and
did not become an annual event until the 1990s, by which time it was an
219 Routley (1958), 231. Long (1971, 352) comments that Pearsall is regarded as a ‘one-work composer’, but that the one work in question is deserving of its place in the repertoire ‘wherever choirs are accomplished enough to sing it’. 220 Chris Gray comments that he is ‘grateful to King’s’ for this innovation, which they have happily borrowed back. The 1880 Truro service did not begin with any musical item, but with the Our Father and the usual Evensong responses; the first carol was not sung until after the first lesson. 221 ‘Truro Perspectives’ from Story of Nine Lessons and Carols DVD (2015). 222 Ashley (2009), 27. 223 Day (2018), 4.
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entirely separate entity from the Christmas Eve service broadcast live on radio.
The 1964 record of carols from King’s under Willcocks, which utilises a slightly
different set of Bible readings from those associated with the Christmas Eve
service, perhaps represents the first real move towards the distinct Carols from
King’s format.224
In 1954, the choral repertoire for the Nine Lessons and Carols service was not
particularly adventurous. They included extracts from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
and a seventeenth-century Italian hymn to the Virgin225, both sung in English; In
dulci jubilo (arr. Pearsall) is sung to the macaronic text in Latin and English.
Newer developments were represented by some arrangements and
harmonisations by Ord, but Cornelius’ Three Kings was the most modern choir
item.
In the 1954 broadcast, the choir was not performing music beyond the reach
of any good amateur choir; by contrast, some of the more recent commissions
demand a professional or quasi-professional level of vocal and often
instrumental competence.226 The choir is already demonstrating the
exceptional clarity of diction and articulation which has become so firmly
associated with the ‘King’s sound’, but the repertoire itself is not unduly
demanding by modern standards.
The congregational carols were sung without choir descants, except for Alan
Gray’s to ‘While shepherds watched’, in verses 2 and 6, where the trebles
‘become’ angels: first telling the terrified shepherds not to fear, then singing to
the glory of God in the final verse. Solo work was fairly limited: the service
began with the now traditional treble solo in Once in Royal David’s City, but the
224 CD 15 in the Complete Argo Recordings box set. It is entitled ‘as sung in the chapel on Christmas Eve 1964’, but the readings are completely different from those listed in the actual order of service (CSV 103). 225 Listed in the order of service only as ‘Anon., Italian, 1694). 226 A point acknowledged by Willcocks: ‘the music which we [Willcocks, Ledger and Cleobury] included in our services was much more difficult than the music which is on that DVD [of the 1954 broadcast]’ (Owen, 2008, 145)
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only further solos were the recitative (tenor) and the angel (treble again) in
‘Break forth O beauteous heavenly light’ from the Christmas Oratorio, and the
baritone in Cornelius’ Three Kings.227
The 1958 recording demonstrates few stylistic changes from the Ord
recording of 1954, though the organ registration is notably lighter and the
rhythms are crisper. Willcocks makes his own arrangements of the Sussex
Carol, God rest ye merry and Away in a manger (with treble solo in verse 2), but
otherwise the repertoire is largely the same as in 1954. The English-language
version of the Christmas Oratorio is still being used, and no other foreign
language carols are included on the recording apart from the Pearsall In dulci
jubilo.
One obvious change in performance practice between 1954 and 1958, and one
which is inextricably associated with King’s, is the evolution of the carol
descant. Although the service is now unimaginable without them, Sir David
Willcocks revealed to the American musicologist William Owen that, when he
took over as Director of Music at King’s in 1957, ‘there were no descants that
I knew of for O come all ye faithful or Hark! The herald-angels sing’. Willcocks’
perception that it was ‘dull… always to have the hymns just sung in unison’
was to change the carol service, and with it the whole flavour of Christmas
choral music, for ever.228
Although successive directors of music at King’s have since made their own
arrangements and written their own descants, it is still the ‘Willcocks
descants’, now almost 60 years old, which have become ‘traditional’ in their
turn, not least in the USA where they are seen as ‘the proper descants’.229 In a
227 It is still true that there is less emphasis on solo work than there might be in a concert performance, but several of the commissions include extensive solos for one or more voice parts: see chapter 5. 228 Owen (2008), 141. 229 Quote from letter to Stephen Cleobury, following a carol service in which the choir had sung some descants of his own (KCAR/8/3/21/13-
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conversation with David Willcocks and Stephen Cleobury about their
respective experiences, Philip Ledger recounts how, having succeeded
Willcocks as Director of Music in 1974, he presented the choir with some
descants he had written for his first Christmas Eve, only to be met with a
polite but firm ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we sing Mr Willcocks’ descants!’ Resolution
was only achieved due to a quick-thinking senior chorister who persuaded the
others that ‘every director of music writes his own descants!’; and this has,
subsequently, proved to be the case.230
In the recording of the 1958 service, when Willcocks was still new in post, his
own descants are clearly still in a transitional stage of development. Once in
royal David’s city is sung without descant, but Hark the herald-angels sing is
almost in the form made familiar through Carols for Choirs 1: the descant of
1958 includes a couple of bars of repeated quavers, whose effect is slightly
fussy compared to the later version. Recordings from 1964 onwards have the
fully developed descants in their final form. So these historical recordings
provide evidence of a period of experimentation by Willcocks in the evolution
of the choir descant.
Musical extracts 7-9 compare successive versions of ‘Sing choirs of angels’, taken
from the complete Argo recordings:
• Track 2 (1954), King’s College Choir/Ord, without descant
• Track 3 (1958), King’s College Choir/Willcocks, with ‘transitional’ descant,
sung in Latin
• Track 4 (1964), King’s College Choir/Willcocks, with descant in its final
‘Carols for Choirs’ form
230 Carols from King’s DVD (Argo 2000). In 2015, the year of Willcocks’ death, the carol service reverted to his Carols for Choirs descants in tribute.
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The now iconic descant to O come all ye faithful , absent in 1954 under Ord, is
sung in 1958 in Latin (Gloria in excelsis Deo), against the vernacular ‘Glory to
God’ of the rest of the choir. The repeated ‘O come’ motif in the refrain has
not yet been added- the trebles sing the melody of the first two lines of the
refrain and only revert to the descant in the final line, again in Latin.
Philip Ledger recalls how this descant was written on a train returning from a
Bach Choir rehearsal, quoting from the Gloria of Ding dong merrily on high.
Willcocks’ explanation for this borrowing was to say ‘I thought to myself, what
would angels be singing in heaven? They’d be singing ‘Gloria, hosanna in
excelsis’.’231 In 1938, Scholes began his entry on carols in the Oxford Companion
to Music with a reference to ‘the first Christmas carol’, meaning the song of the
angels. He went on: ‘its inspiring words (though not, alas! its tune) have been
preserved’.232 Perhaps Willcocks’ descant solves the mystery of what that ‘first
carol’ really sounded like.
Fig. 3: Descant to ‘Sing choirs of angels’ from Carols for Choirs 1.
231 Owen (2008), 166. 232 Scholes (1938), 139.
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3.5 Carols from King’s: an unattainable ideal?
King’s first toured abroad (to Scandinavia) in 1936. Krieg’s overview of
Anglican church music for a German audience treats the Nine Lessons and
Carols as ‘a national event’233. For many years now, its reach has been not only
national, but global. The King’s commissions include work from Finland,
Estonia, Australia and the United States, and the service is broadcast to over
300 radio stations in the US alone, as well as the BBC and the World
Service.234 As Pritchard comments: ‘it can sometimes feel as though all roads
lead back to King’s’.235 Any book or article about carols will mention it, and it
is rare for any book or article about King’s not to mention its carol service.236
When Carols for Choirs was published in 1961, edited by Willcocks with
Reginald Jacques and then with John Rutter, it represented a change in the
approach to carol music which has also helped to spread the reputation of
King’s, and in particular its association with carols. The traditional, folk-based
carol repertoire was rejuvenated and given the gloss of a professional
arrangement. Yet it also contained a typical running order for other choirs to
emulate in their own churches; more importantly, it made available a much
wider range of seasonal repertoire, in a form accessible even to choirs of very
average ability, with the addition of descants and harmonies for the more
adventurous.
Far from being the elitist gesture claimed by Boyce-Tillman, then, Carols for
Choirs was an attempt to make the repertoire performed at King’s and familiar
to so many from the radio and TV broadcasts, available in written form for
other choirs to sing. At the same time, Willcocks was writing descants and
233 Krieg (2007), 34. 234 Statistics from http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/events/chapel-services/nine-lessons.html (accessed 25/6/18). 235 Pritchard, Independent on Sunday, 6/12/2015. 236 Interestingly, however, the DVD The Boast of King’s (1980), which focuses on the choir under Philip Ledger and includes interviews with a young John Butt and Gerald Finley, makes no mention of the carol service.
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making new arrangements in order to create more of a challenge for more
able choirs out of the same repertoire, while remaining within the range of
more modest performers.
In Carols for Choirs, Willcocks and his colleagues made available a vast new
repertoire of carol arrangements which both satisfied the demands of
professional musicians and musicologists, but remained within the reach of
amateur choirs without a dilution of standards. In this way, too, King’s became
the benchmark for choirs which could never hope to equal its resources, but
who were inspired by the availability of recordings and published music to
extend their own repertoire.
The King’s commissions are designed expressly for the choir to sing and not
intended for congregational participation. Although this is true to the original
structure of the service, which made relatively little concession to public
participation, by this definition some of the King’s commissions are not
technically carols at all: Coghlan argues that many of the new commissions are
less carols than ‘Christmas anthems’, art music designed to be sung by
professional choirs in churches and cathedrals.237 Length, elaborate setting of
text, variation between solo and chorus passages, range of textures, descants,
use of organ and/or other instruments, all extend the definition and the
technical requirements beyond the origins of the carol genre. Cleobury claims
that there is a correlation between those carols which have entered into the
repertoire more widely and a classic carol structure (burden/refrain format
and some connection to song, dance or lullaby)- and that their ability to bridge
the perceived gap between ‘art music’ and populist taste is the reason for their
success.238
237 Coghlan (2016), 176. In fact, Richard Rodney Bennett’s second commission, On Christmas Day to my heart (1999) is published by Novello as ‘anthem for SATB’. 238 Personal communication 23/6/17. See below, chapter 5.
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Coghlan argues that the ‘underground’ carol of the Puritan era, sung on the
streets and with little connection to the Nativity, is now better represented by
Fairytale of New York than by the ‘art music’ carol associated with King’s.
Mindful of MacMillan’s concern that liturgical music should never become
escapist, however, the aim of the King’s commissions is to ensure that carols
are not merely seen as a fundamentally backward-looking genre, concerned
with nostalgia and comfort rather than challenge. It was precisely this which
provoked Richard Causton’s decision in 2015 to write The Flight. His carol,
which alternates a calm refrain (‘May those who travel light/Find shelter on the
flight/May Bethlehem/Give peace to them’) with much more angular, anguished
verses centring on Jesus as refugee in Egypt, sets a poem by another former
refugee, George Szirtes, at the heart of the migration crisis in summer 2015,
thus bringing the Biblical narrative into close relationship with the major story
of 21st century life.239
The very nature of the carol means that it is probably the least likely of all
musical genres to inspire innovative new techniques: carol services are almost
deliberately designed around an appeal to nostalgia and familiarity. So the very
fact that exciting new carol music is now being commissioned from the best
contemporary composers, church-based or not, also means that it has
transcended its origins and sits between tidy divisions.
239 The Flight (OUP X612, 2015).
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Chapter Four: Issues in composing and commissioning new music for
the Anglican choral tradition
Bob Chilcott, a former King’s chorister who is now among the most prolific
composers of new carols, has remarked that ‘amateurs and professionals alike
are very open to new music’.240 During the course of this study I have
repeatedly encountered a desire among church musicians to develop the
tradition, rather than preserve it in aspic: they share a determination that
‘church music’ must not become a musical blind alley, where developments
taking place elsewhere do not penetrate. It was Cleobury’s desire to ensure
that ‘church music’ contributed to the maintenance of the highest possible
standards, by engaging with the best available modern exponents of
composition whether or not they were experienced in writing for the liturgy,
which led to the custom of commissioning a new carol every year. Excellence
in execution needed to be paired with excellence of material, and a facility with
the best repertoire of the past was to be balanced with a readiness to push
back any boundaries which would have enabled church music to exist in
isolation from stylistic developments. It is to a consideration of commissioning
for the church in general, and King’s in particular, that we now turn.
This chapters will examine in more detail the process of commissioning and
some of the factors which determine whether, and to what extent, a piece is
absorbed into the repertoire. As we saw in chapter 1, the commissioning
policy at King’s demonstrates that interesting and innovative composers are
willing to write for the Anglican liturgy, regardless of their own religious
affiliation or previous experience in writing for the church. In order to set the
King’s commissions in the context of other developments in church music
since the late 20th century, this chapter will explore some other high profile
commissioning projects undertaken for cathedral and collegiate choirs. 240 Pritchard, Independent on Sunday 6/12/2015.
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Reference will also be made to the experience of composers and performers
of church music in responding to expectations about new repertoire.
It was not possible to employ precisely the same methodology in questioning
all those who agreed to contribute to this study; every commissioning process
is different, and responds to the needs of a particular choir, project or
occasion. Choirbook for the Queen is an exception: it was not commissioned for
one choir or one liturgical occasion, and the parameters of the commissioning
process changed over time. In addition, although I was able to speak to more
than one member of the editorial board for the Choirbook, I was asked to keep
some of their responses confidential and unattributed. For this reason the
research questions which applied to the other examples of commissioning
needed to be handled differently in respect of the section of the thesis
pertaining to the Choirbook. In each case, the date of the relevant
correspondence or conversation is given for reference.
Although the questions put to correspondents varied depending on
circumstance, they included some or all of the following:
• What brief did you/do you give to composers? What limitations, if any, do you
place on them?
• Are they involved in any way in the rehearsal process, and what do you do if
revision is needed?
• Who is on your wish list for a commission? Is there anyone you would not ask
(and if so, why)?
• Which of the commissions have become part of your ongoing repertoire? Are
you aware of any which have entered the mainstream repertoire beyond your
particular choir? What do you think are the factors which affect that process?
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4.1 Composing for the liturgy: process, context and text
Michael Nicholas, formerly organist at St Matthew’s Northampton and then
Norwich Cathedral, has a long history as a champion of new music in church.
His unease with some aspects of Thomas’ anti-utilitarian approach to new
music is balanced by a desire, shared with Cleobury and other directors of
music in cathedrals and colleges, to ensure that music for the liturgy is both
composed and performed to the highest possible standard. 241
Nicholas is clear that the context for which a piece is written should not make
a difference to the craft and skill which goes into its composition, but it may
well affect the process of composition in other ways; for example stipulations
about length, range, an emphasis on ensemble rather than on individual
virtuosity, or in the choice and use of appropriate text. In the case of carol
services, with the possible exception of the King’s Nine Lessons, Nicholas is
particularly aware that ‘most of those attending don’t come for the music’,
which means that introducing new material can be problematic. At the same
time, he is keen to demonstrate that liturgical music can stretch people and
change attitudes. He comments that for the majority of non-specialists,
perceptions of what is ‘new’ or ‘modern’ in church music are no different to
those towards other branches of the classical canon- if, as he suggests, the
majority still see Rite of Spring as an example of advanced modernity, then it is
unrealistic to expect church music to adopt more experimental forms!
Nicholas has always been keen to challenge this view: his experience with both
a parish and then a cathedral choir (which for a number of years hosted a
festival of new music for the liturgy, until a more cautious chapter became
uncomfortable with its direction), was that it is possible to build a choir in
which performing difficult music becomes part of the atmosphere. This then
attracts others to hear what is being written and learn from it, both as 241 Personal communication 17/8/16.
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composers, performers and congregation, so that the tradition is renewed
from within.
Nicholas likens the process of commissioning to ‘visiting a bespoke tailor’. In his
experience, the composer might wish to visit the building and hear the choir in
situ before writing for it. Cleobury and Zeeman’s article ‘The Sound of the
Chapel’ brings together a number of composers, performers and clergy who
have negotiated the particular challenges of responding to the King’s
acoustic.242 Vocal precision, clearly enunciated consonants and disciplined
intonation are all consistently required: if they are neglected, or the balance or
placing within the building is mismanaged, the result will be, as Judith Weir
memorably describes it, ‘aural porridge’.243 The King’s commissions
overwhelmingly reflect this, with the majority demonstrating a strong emphasis
on rhythmic precision.
Choice of text may be a matter for discussion: Nicholas remarks that
composers (particularly but not exclusively those with no personal faith) may
not be happy to set the particular text which a choir director has in mind, but
may be willing to negotiate or offer an alternative. Cleobury agrees with
Nicholas that the ability of the music to illustrate and bring out the text is
central to the process of carol composition, as it is in any form of choral
writing. In the context of the King’s service, there are obvious limits to the
degree of freedom over choice of text, because they do have to be suitable for
a very specific liturgical moment, and complement or illustrate a given series of
Biblical texts.244
Bouteneff’s reflection on Arvo Pärt’s music contains an interesting section on
text-setting and the relationship between text and music.245 The majority of
242 Massing and Zeeman (2014), 364-7. 243 Weir, ibid., 364. See below, chapter 4.2, for Roxanna Panufnik’s similar response to Westminster Cathedral. 244 Cleobury (1988). 245 Bouteneff (2015), 57ff.
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Pärt’s works are set to text, and the majority of those texts are sacred: yet his
wordless music (for example Spiegel im Spiegel or Cantus in Memory of Benjamin
Britten) has proven as evocative of the spirit as his more overtly religious work:
Bouteneff quotes one listener as saying ‘I am not a religious person, but I have
always said that if anything could possibly make me so, it would be Pärt’s
music’.246
The way in which the music interacts with the nine Scripture readings is
central to planning the repertoire for the Nine Lessons and Carols service. In
his memorandum on the history of the service, Milner-White was clear that
the readings were integral to the structure: ‘their liturgical order and pattern is
the strength of the service and prevents it from becoming a recital of carols
rather than an act of worship’, while the carols offer an opportunity for the
congregation to respond to their message.247 While it is the music which
attracts most attention, the readings are for Milner-White the ‘backbone’ of
the service, a cantus firmus to which the carols offered a counterpoint; without
them, the carols on their own risked descending to the status of a concert. 248
The carols enlarge and comment on aspects of the unfolding story (for
example, the way in which Adam lay y-bounden, often but not exclusively
presented in Boris Ord’s version, reflects theologically on the consequences of
human sinfulness in Genesis). For this reason, mention will be made of the
position in the service given to each of the new commissions (see Appendix 1:
for the readings themselves see p.85). A placement after the eighth reading
(Matthew 2: 1-12, ‘the wise men are led by a star to Jesus’; the last one to
recount part of the story of the Incarnation, before the climactic ‘unfolding of
the mystery’ in John 1) may free the composer to take a more general
approach, rather than concentrating on one aspect of the Christmas narrative; 246 Ibid., 59. 247 Milner-White, KCA, Cambridge.coll/21/1 (1952), 2. 248 Routley (1958, 250), quotes an explanatory statement by Milner-White on the development of the King’s service.
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this may have made it easier for composers who are not themselves Christian
or churchgoing to engage with the process of composing for this context.249
This point will be expanded in chapter 5.
In a letter preserved in the King’s archive, Peter Sculthorpe comments on the
difficulty of expressing the whole meaning of the text in a short setting. His
commission The birthday of thy King (1988) is based on a text by Henry
Vaughan, but Sculthorpe needed to cut some of the words in order not to
exceed the required length of ‘two-and-a-half or three minutes’: nevertheless
he feels that he has ‘been able to keep the sense and the drama of the Vaughan
poem’ while honouring the time constraints.250
Carl Vine comments that in setting the text for his commissioned carol, Ring
Out, Wild Bells (2012), he felt a need to move away from previous settings of
the same text which ‘generally squeezed the text into repetitive bouncing
triplet rhythms. That isn’t how I read the words’.251 However, he does not
allow the text to confine him: the emphasis is on rhythm, but ‘without the
repetitive verse structure’ associated with the carol.
In his exuberant Christmas Carol (2002), Robin Holloway acknowledges that
‘seeking out unhackneyed texts, I found such attractive material in the byways
that I couldn’t resist weaving together from it a composite tapestry, then
setting the lot!’252 He ended up with a rich mixture of liturgical, biblical and
poetic references, which are reflected by equally numerous musical quotations.
Many carol texts lend themselves to atmospheric word-painting: one of the
most effective is Chilcott’s Shepherd’s Carol (commissioned for BBC Carols from
249 It is interesting to note that there are very few, if any, musical treatments of the ninth lesson, John 1: 1-14, ‘St John unfolds the mystery of the Incarnation’. The beauty of the prose would lend itself to a musical setting, but it is arguably too theologically complex to be easily expressed in carol form. 250 Letter to Stephen Cleobury in the King’s archive (24/6/88) KCAR 8/3/21/13- 251 Carl Vine, programme note to Ring Out, Wild Bells (Faber 2012) 252 Composer’s note to Christmas Carol (Boosey and Hawkes 2002).
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King’s, 2000) which speaks of ‘a silence more lovely than music’: the text at that
point fades into humming, followed by a quaver rest of silence across all the
voice parts. Causton’s The Flight (2015) deliberately uses the perceived
impersonal quality of the English treble tone- marked ‘cold’ for extra emphasis-
to illustrate the detachment of border guards and the dehumanising effect of
forced migration.
In the context of a carol service, because many of those attending or listening
will not be regular worshippers, there may be a more strongly felt need for
music which will help them understand the Biblical narrative and their own
response to it. In a number of Victorian carols, the theology is questionable at
best: ‘Christian children all must be/mild, obedient, good as he’ bears very little
resemblance to the sole glimpse of Jesus’ childhood in the Gospels (the twelve-
year-old Jesus, arguing with his parents when they fail to understand why he
stayed behind in the Temple in Jerusalem, is far more plausibly human).
Similarly, the infamous assertion ‘No crying he makes’ is a denial of Jesus’
humanity which is contrary to the whole message of Christmas- that in the
Incarnation, God became fully and completely human without compromising
his divinity. Warlock’s Bethlehem Down, despite being written in profoundly
secular circumstances, manages to convey some equally profound theological
truths in its exploration of the interplay between Christ’s humble birth, the
manner of his death, and his kingship. The melody is in a wistful minor, echoing
the lullaby mentioned in the text, but also foretelling the sleep of death
following the crucifixion. Rubbra’s Dormi Jesu creates the same wistful effect,
but without the gathering menace implicit in Warlock’s carol.
The King’s commissions vary in their approach to text-setting. Almost none
are directly biblical, and a few are only peripherally related to the nativity, if at
all- but the theology they espouse is almost always more demanding than that
of the congregational items, providing opportunities to engage at different
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levels with the narrative. Some invite the listener to participate in or observe
the events described: Dove’s Three kings (2000) provides a king for every age
group to identify with, matched by a gradual slowing of the pace of the music in
each successive verse, almost as if to mark the ageing process. In Paulus’
Pilgrim Jesus (1996), the listener is invited to participate much more actively, by
recreating the events of the first Christmas in their own life (‘in the manger of
my body’). The same effect is sought in Judith Bingham’s God would be born in
thee (2004).
Two of the commissions - Ades’ Fayrfax Carol (1997) and Michael Berkeley’s
This Endernight (2016) set different versions of the same text, but treat it in
completely different ways. Berkeley’s is a textbook carol, a lullaby with a clear
burden-refrain structure, a steady rhythm and a clear tonal centre; Ades’ is
virtuosic, chromatic and rhythmically complex. This is certainly not a new
phenomenon. Older texts are no longer in copyright and can be adapted or
rearranged at will. For example, the standard carol repertoire includes two
quite different settings of Rossetti’s poem In the bleak midwinter, by Darke and
Holst. The Choirbook for the Queen adds a third, by John Casken, which is
different again: each use the text in different ways to produce colour and
mood. Tomorrow shall be my dancing day has also produced two contrasting
settings: the Willcocks version (Carols for Choirs 1, 203ff) is clearly a dance tune
in 6/8, whereas John Gardner’s version has more complex, staccato rhythms
which would be difficult to dance to. At the same time, the Willcocks version
demands divisi in all parts and adopts some more complex rhythms itself in
verse 3, where the basses have the melody and the other parts sing decoration
to the syllable ‘ah’ over the top, including a b’’ in the treble part which would
put it outside the competence of many amateur choirs.
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4.2 James MacMillan: faith in composition
All the choral directors whom I approached for this study are themselves
people of faith, so the relationship between music and liturgy is of key
significance for them. However, they all agree that compositions
commissioned expressly for liturgical use do not necessarily have to be written
by composers with a personal faith; what matters is that they are written with
a sensitivity for context.
James MacMillan is a composer whose personal commitment to the liturgy is
well known, yet he has usually avoided being categorised primarily as a
‘religious’ composer, still less as a composer of ‘church music’ in the narrow
sense. The Christian themes which are intrinsic to his music are not restricted
to those pieces for liturgical use, nor do they limit their appeal to those who
share his faith. MacMillan asserts that ‘music is spiritual because it deals with
truth’.253 However, he is also concerned to ensure that, while his sources of
inspiration are audible, they should not predominate in such a way as to
alienate those who do not resonate with the liturgical tradition which informs
his music. Even those pieces whose genesis is in chant, sacred themes and texts
may be envisioned more as sacred concert music than for liturgical
performance. Ben Nicholas, director of Merton College Choir, cites
MacMillan’s settings of the Passions as examples of this.
In the case of MacMillan’s instrumental music, the distinction between sacred
and secular is even more blurred.254 Sacred themes and quotes from plainsong
or other liturgical music appear in new forms, for example in his trumpet
concerto which is given the name Epiclesis (Greek for the invocation of the
Holy Spirit), or his percussion concerto, Veni, veni Emmanuel. Musical material
253 Lecture to University of York music department, 21/2/17. 254 As discussed in chapter 1above, Arnold (2014), Phillips (2005) and Mellers (2002) all acknowledge the difficulty of making this distinction, from a range of faith and musical perspectives.
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with strong church associations is reimagined by being heard out of its original
context; but it cannot reasonably be suggested that the quality of MacMillan’s
music suffers because of the source of his inspiration.
MacMillan’s music is on a continuum of difficulty, from congregational (he
himself directs a parish choir in Glasgow, and his congregational St Anne’s Mass
was written for them) to extremely challenging: his Mass for John Henry
Newman, composed for the papal visit in 2010 to coincide with Newman’s
beatification, was criticised as trite, which is not a description anyone would
apply to his opera scores.255 Damian Thompson argues that the stylistic
conservatism of MacMillan’s introit for the same occasion, Tu es Petrus, earned
him the disapproval of a liberal hierarchy because it equated to theological
conservatism.256 It is true that MacMillan’s mass setting is more consciously
accessible than the majority of his concert music: despite some characteristic
semiquaver grace notes in the vocal line, he marks them as optional so as not
to deter less dexterous voices.
More than twenty years later, MacMillan’s response to being asked to compose
for King’s in 1995 is still one of pleasure and privilege. The only stipulations he
was given were length (the finished carol is about seven minutes long), range
(Treble 1 and Tenor 1 are consistently on a high tessitura, with frequent g’’s
and a’’s), and divisi, specifically in the tenor part which he divides into three,
plus a tenor solo towards the end. As a composer of faith he was instinctively
able to engage with the liturgical and spiritual resonances of the service,
without compromising his distinctive compositional voice.
255 The papal mass was described by one commentator as ‘too consciously accessible: a folksong modality meeting tonality in a form similar to some of Vaughan Williams’ more popular writing’; despite MacMillan’s standing as a composer, this particular work was perhaps given less serious consideration than others of his works because of the specific context for which it was written. 256 Spectator, 2010. Thompson’s own conservatism is so deliberately contentious that it would be unwise to take this assessment entirely at face value.
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Roxanna Panufnik , like MacMillan a practising Catholic, reflects on the
experience of composing a Mass for Westminster Cathedral. For obvious
reasons, a mass setting allows no flexibility in terms of the actual text, but it is
one which has for her a profound meaning and resonance. She was able to use
the opportunity to explore the liturgical text as ‘a great word-painting
exercise’ and an opportunity to experiment with the limits and opportunities
of sound in a building whose acoustic does not lend itself to complexity.257
Arvo Pärt, himself profoundly influenced by Orthodox spirituality although by
no means all his music is written for sacred or liturgical settings, seems to
suggest that the composer is a vessel for some external form of inspiration
when he comments: ‘A composer is a musical instrument, and at the same time
a performer on that instrument’.258
MacMillan, Panufnik and Pärt all respond to the compositional process both
from a place of committed Christian faith and an understanding of the liturgical
setting of the music. Jonathan Harvey, whose own beliefs were more akin to
Buddhism than Christianity, was nonetheless able to set Christian texts,
including liturgical texts, with sensitivity and imagination. The fact that Robert
Saxton, whose background is Jewish, is happy to write for Christian liturgy
(including the Choirbook for the Queen) demonstrates similarly that the
‘contract’ which exists between choir and congregation, as described by
Arnold, need not necessarily include a shared faith.259 The same could be said
of the contract between composer, commissioner and performer. In both
cases, however, it does have to include a sensitivity to context.
In Harvey’s case, the training he received as a chorister at St Michael’s Tenbury
instilled in him a profound understanding of the relationship between music,
257 Darlington and Kreider (2003), 77. 258 From Pärt’s diaries: quoted in Bouteneff (2015), 223. 259 Arnold (2014), xiv.
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liturgy and worship. His response to the task of composition was deeply
spiritual, if not that of a doctrinally orthodox Christian: in a series of lectures
on music as creative process, Harvey describes music as ‘an explanation of the
divine universe’, whose beauty, symmetry and structure speak of ‘God’s
creative mind’.260 Composition, for Harvey, is inherently spiritual: ‘I guide the
music, and it guides me. This double process defines the religion of a
composer… it is always a quest, for music and through music.’261
4.3 Choirbook for the Queen
Other recent patterns in commissioning in church music represent the same
desire as at King’s to utilise the best available composers, regardless of
background, and thus to refresh and expand the tradition. Interesting parallels
can be drawn between the King’s commissions, now in their 36th year and thus
a longitudinal project in renewing music for the liturgy, and two shorter-term
projects: the Choirbook for the Queen (2011), which was centred on music to
celebrate a particular event, and the Merton Choirbook (2013), which focused on
music for use in a given place. Each of these will be considered in turn.
Produced to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the commissioning
process for Choirbook for the Queen began by identifying composers
representative of a wider musical scene, not all of whom had experience of
writing for the church or for voices. The Foreword to the Choirbook, by Peter
Maxwell Davies, highlights the intention of the project that they should
‘celebrate the present day ‘renaissance’ of choral music in the Church’ and
‘represent the best church music being written in this country’.262
The Choirbook project was curated by committee over several years, and
funded by the Friends of Cathedral Music alongside their other Jubilee project,
260 Harvey (1999), xiv. 261 Ibid., 6. 262 Maxwell Davies, Foreword to Choirbook for the Queen (2011), vii.
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the Diamond Choristerships which subsidise one chorister place at each
cathedral; both were intended to draw attention to cathedral music as a living
tradition fit for the twenty-first century.263 The intention behind the Choirbook
commissions was to use specifically Christian (though not necessarily liturgical)
texts, in order to differentiate it clearly from other areas of contemporary
music: the foreword is clear that the collection was for cathedral and collegiate
choirs to sing.264
Eleven of the 44 pieces were commissioned specially, while other composers
and their publishers were asked if they had work suitable for inclusion.
Publishers were initially asked to select pieces for inclusion in the Choirbook out
of previously unpublished work, though not all the pieces eventually included
fitted that brief. The original idea was to create a series of concerts to show
off the new work, with one big centrepiece by Peter Maxwell Davies as Master
of the Queen’s Music, plus other pieces using the local commissioning links
that individual choirs already had. In the event, this never took place, but every
cathedral in the country received copies of the book, and was asked to
perform at least two of the 44 anthems during the Diamond Jubilee year.
Given these intentions, it was therefore not unreasonable to expect the
finished works to be suitable not just for choirs of mixed voices, including
children’s voices, and to be usable in liturgical performance. Whether the
Choirbook succeeded in that is debatable.
The fact that the Choirbook for the Queen consists of pieces which were not
composed with a particular building in mind in fact limits their practical
application, precisely because the soundworlds they create will not be suited
to every acoustic or every available set of vocal forces. Furthermore, many of
the works included in the Choirbook are extremely demanding in terms of
263 See successive issues of Cathedral Music, the FCM magazine. 264 Choirbook for the Queen (2011), vii.
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range, technique and texture. Contrary to Maxwell Davies’ assertion that the
commissions are ‘satisfyingly within the capability of good amateur choirs as
well as professionals’, the overall impression left by the Choirbook for the Queen
is of a collection of virtuoso pieces which would be difficult, if not impossible,
for most ordinary choirs to attempt, and even cathedrals have not adopted the
majority of them. 265 This underlines the extent to which church music has
transformed itself into a professional undertaking, as described in the previous
chapter.
As mentioned above, one honourable exception is Dove’s Vast ocean of light,
which has already achieved a steady place in the cathedral repertoire.
However, Dove’s commission was not included on the accompanying CD
which features thirteen of the pieces from the Choirbook. 266 Despite the fact
that the project was aimed at cathedral and collegiate choirs, the CD was
recorded by the BBC Singers, directed by Stephen Cleobury, therefore utilising
professional adult voices on every part, and sopranos rather than trebles.
While the same is true in reverse of many choirs who have taken up the King’s
commissions for use elsewhere (Thea Musgrave’s Hear the Voice of the Bard
(2013) is the only commission to be listed specifically for TrATB rather than
SATB) , Cleobury’s involvement in the project at every level (as a member of
the editorial group, advisory group, and the Choirbook Trust which oversaw
the governance of the project) creates a ground for direct comparison
between the reception of the Choirbook and the King’s commissions.
4.4 The Merton Choirbook
The Merton Choirbook was curated by a priest (Simon Jones) and musician (Ben
Nicholas), to mark the 750th anniversary of Merton College, Oxford, in 2013.
Like the Choirbook for the Queen, the Merton project was also a conscious
265 Ibid., vii. 266 Choirbook for the Queen, Priory PRCD 1097 (BBC Singers/Cleobury, 2013)
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homage to the Eton Choirbook. The Eton collection, at a mere 500, was 250
years younger than Merton but was intended to form a similar body of music
for performance within a specific environment. As part of the community of
an Oxford college, Jones and Nicholas worked together to produce a body of
new music to be performed by the newly-reformed chapel choir of that
community. This detailed awareness of context and available forces has more
in common with King’s than Choirbook for the Queen, and gives the project a
different kind of focus.267 The fact that the top line is sung by sopranos rather
than trebles is an important diference, but the collegiate context and the age of
the back line is commensurate with the situation at King’s.
Although the Choirbook for the Queen was intended as an active contribution to
an ongoing repertoire in every cathedral, very few of the collected pieces have
actually fulfilled that expectation. Some of them employ advanced techniques
and adventurous harmonies, but few have made it into the mainstream
repertoire because of their technical difficulty, or are unsuitable for liturgical
use due to their length or choice of text. As suggested in Chapter 1, there is
much material in the Choirbook both to support and challenge Martin Thomas’
contention that church music is unduly conservative in style.
More broadly envisaged than the Choirbook, which restricts itself to anthems,
the Merton commissions are explicitly intended as liturgical pieces (for example
a set of evening canticles by Eriks Esenvalds, and a complete set of the Advent
antiphons from several different composers). The Merton Choirbook thus
creating a slightly more focused brief for the composers than was the case with
Choirbook for the Queen. Unlike the King’s carol service, the celebration of the
college’s anniversary gave composers an opportunity to respond to different
points in the liturgical year. While Choirbook for the Queen drew on British
267 I am indebted to Ben Nicholas for his assistance with research for this section (personal communication 25/1/18) .
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composers, Esenvalds and some of the other composers represented in the
Merton Choirbook come from a Slavic or Baltic background. Their music is
obviously not rooted in Anglican liturgical practice, but comes out of a strong
indigenous choral tradition, so they bring to their compositions an
understanding of how voices work and what they can be asked to produce.
Nicholas did not wish to stifle the voices of the composers by making their
brief too specific, but the result needed to be within the capacity of the
choir. The key criterion specified to composers for Merton was range.
Nicholas was keen to set realistic expectations for a group of singers who, as
at King’s, are still students, and whose voices are still developing; as he
acknowledges, basses in particular may not yet be secure in the lowest part of
their voice. This is presumably why Cleobury usually gives a relatively
conservative estimate of range to commissioned composers: not because his
singers are individually incapable of singing higher or lower, but that sustaining a
consistently high or low tessitura over the course of ninety minutes is harder
for non-professionals. The Willcocks descants are skilfully written to sound
more acrobatically demanding than they are: nonetheless, the a’’ in the final
carol, Hark the Herald-Angels Sing, has to be achieved cleanly at the end of a
long service.
Writing for younger, less experienced voices therefore demands sensitivity: a
composer who is too concerned to show off what he or she can do may be
less focused on the technical abilities or limitations of the singers for whom the
piece is written. Phillips makes a similar point about the difficulty of achieving a
consistent sound from younger voices: over an entire concert, or by extension
throughout the length of a carol service, less developed voices will begin to
struggle with singing at the top or bottom ends of their respective ranges.268
268 Phillips (2005), 499-500.
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Nicholas found that some composers, especially those who are instrumental
performers at a high level and imagine vocal colour or sound in instrumental
terms, may need advice as to how to write realistically for the voice. He
commented that ‘Harrison Birtwistle writes like a clarinettist’, for example
expecting singers to accent semiquavers on the final beat of the bar, or to be
able to pitch sudden entries ‘from nowhere’. It can be argued that Tippett’s St
John Service (1961) also requires this skill, not least of the treble soloist in the
Nunc Dimittis; but Nicholas remarks that a treble experienced enough to be
asked to sing that particular solo will have enough familiarity with the
soundworld and the range of their own voice to understand where their part is
pitched even if they do not have ‘perfect pitch’.
At the stage of commissioning for the Choirbook, the choir at Merton had only
been together as an ensemble for five years, and some of its members for
much less; further, for the reasons just explored, even good undergraduate
voices are unlikely to have reached their full capacity. Nicholas therefore
suggested to composers that divisi writing would be permissible for sopranos
and basses, but that altos and tenors should be left to sing together. This may
also be a reason why almost none of the King’s commissions contain an alto
solo, though Ades’ Fayrfax carol (1997), with its multiple divisions, at one point
asks for three alto soloists, in a choir which only has four altogether. Michael
Berkeley’s This Endernight (2016) includes a relatively undemanding solo for
each voice part in turn, but the majority of solo work in the King’s
commissions is left to the trebles.
Rehearsal time was also a major constraint. One or two of the commissions
initially needed to be reworked before they could be performed because they
were simply too technically demanding for a student choir. Nicholas points out
that another constraint with a choir made up of students, as is also the case at
King’s, is the frequency of change within the choir, so that at least a quarter of
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them will be different every year; repertoire which was commissioned in 2013
may well be new to every singer five years later.
Cleobury has said on a number of occasions that he is lucky never to have
been turned down by a composer. Nicholas was slightly less fortunate: Julian
Anderson was unable to accept a commission for the Merton Choirbook because
of the timescale for delivery, though he did contribute to Choirbook for the
Queen. Of those who might have been asked to contribute to Merton,
Nicholas most regrets not having had the opportunity to commission Thomas
Adès; as with the King’s commissions, his concern was to approach the best
composers, not merely those with the best reputation in church music. He
echoes both his father, Michael Nicholas, and Martin Thomas, in saying that the
church should be able to make use of the best in art wherever it originates:
‘there is no excuse for bad music in church’. Such an attitude resonates with
Terry’s article of many decades earlier.
In the case of the Nine Lessons and Carols format, there is a significant
amount of material which repeats every year so that it remains in the memory;
the two Choirbooks are much more varied collections which do not necessarily
lend themselves to regular recurrence, so that they easily become unfamiliar
within a short time. This has meant that with the exception of the Esenvalds
evening canticle settings, Matthew Martin’s responses and perhaps Gabriel
Jackson’s Passion, few of the Merton commissions have yet become well
known.
The composers who have written for both Merton and King’s are Birtwistle,
Chilcott, Dove, Jackson, MacMillan, Tavener and Weir; all of whom, with the
exception of Birtwistle, are also represented in the Choirbook for the Queen.
The Merton collection also includes some well-known choral composers who
have not (yet!) written for King’s, such as Rihards Dubra, Ola Gjeilo, Kerry
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Andrew, Matthew Martin, Cecilia McDowall, Francis Pott, Robert Saxton and
Howard Skempton.269
4.5 Commissioning policy in York Minster since 2008
A different approach to commissioning for a particular choir, in a particular
building and within a particular liturgical context, is provided by Robert
Sharpe, director of music at York Minster since 2008. Like many other
cathedrals, York has adopted the Nine Lessons and Carols format for its own
use: Eric Milner-White was Dean of York from 1941-1963 following his career
at King’s, and the two institutions also share a book of anthems arranged
chronologically by composer, though each book also contains a localised
appendix. Before arriving at York, Sharpe was Director of Music at Truro,
where he instigated a similar tradition of annual Christmas commissioning for
their own Nine Lessons service. The practice has since been continued there
by Chris Gray. Sharpe brought the tradition to York on his appointment in
2008, with the agreement of Chapter.270 By bringing the idea of an annual
commission to York from Truro, Sharpe relates the Nine Lessons service both
to its original home, and to the newer but now firmly established tradition of
an annual commission as begun at King’s; he relocates it in a cathedral with
two treble lines and a mixed back line combining professional lay clerks and
student choral scholars. This mixture of old and new brings the tradition full
circle, and illustrates the broader changes in church music examined in this
study.
The fee for a York commission is £500, which Sharpe believes is the same as
that paid at King’s.271 This does not sound like a large amount, but it comes
269 See below p.127 for further discussion of this point. 270 Personal communication 19/10/17 271 This was clearly not always the case. A letter from Cleobury to Peter Sculthorpe (24/6/88) remarks that ‘although we have no funds available for commissioning, composers have found that the publicity attendant upon the Service has resulted in good sales’ (KCAR/8/3/21/13-). The fact that the commissions are all recorded by King’s (and that the most recent now also appear in podcasts) must also add to their financial
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with a guarantee of two live performances to a total of around 5000 people at
the two Nine Lessons and Carols services in the week before Christmas at
York.272 At King’s, the guarantee is extended to worldwide broadcast to tens
of millions of people, publication and probable recording; York too made a CD
of recent commissions in 2018. 273
Occasional commissions are also given to composers whose fee is higher: for
example the Judith Bingham York Service, premiered in 2017 and broadcast on
Radio 3 in 2018, cost £3000 and was paid for by the Friends of York Minster,
as was the earlier Missa Brevis by David Briggs. James MacMillan’s fee for a
Short Service to be premiered at the Cathedral Organists’ Association
centenary (to be held in York in 2019) is £8000; the fact that it is being
commissioned specifically for the COA anniversary suggests that it might be
expected to have an interesting organ part, whereas Sharpe usually suggests to
composers that the carol commissions should be unaccompanied.274 Many of
the King’s commissions are also written for a cappella performance, though the
majority include optional keyboard parts for rehearsal, and some, such as
Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem (1985) or Rutti’s De Virgine Maria (2014), go so far
as to specify organ registration.
Sharpe’s preference for unaccompanied pieces is explained by the vagaries of
the York acoustic: the way the organ speaks into the Quire is currently very
different from its sound in the nave, although it is hoped to redress this
somewhat in a forthcoming restoration. Writing for the acoustic, as at King’s,
is a major part of the brief which Sharpe gives to the composer; in both
buildings, the resonance demands clarity, and Sharpe adds that at York ‘a lot
of energy and a big texture’ are also required, if the sound is to come through
potential, but this correspondence suggests that in 1988 the commercial possibilities of the service had not yet been fully realised. 272 These sums contrast with the budget of £100,000 for the Merton Choirbook. 273 Beatam (Regent Records 2019). 274 The completed commission (Boosey and Hawkes 2019) is for SATB a cappella with optional organ.
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to best advantage. The King’s carol service archive contains an article written
by a sound engineer on the technicalities of broadcasting from the chapel,
which remarks on the difference to the acoustic when a congregation is
present. Composers who write to the six-second echo when the chapel is
empty need to be aware that the reverberations are significantly altered when
the space contains approximately 1500 people.275
Sharpe and Cleobury give similar stipulations as to length: although Sculthorpe
seems to have been given a very tight 2 ½ to 3 minutes in 1988, four to five
minutes is generally preferred. Some composers for both choirs have
considerably exceeded that: notably Ben Rowarth (York 2015), whose
extraordinary Hymn of the Nativity for SATB choir and extended tenor solo
lasted almost twelve minutes, creating a striking centrepiece at the heart of the
service, and Alexander Goehr’s Carol of St Steven (King’s 1987), based on a
mediaeval text which appears in Sandys’ 1833 collection Christmas Carols
Ancient and Modern, and which runs to nearly eight minutes. At the other end
of the scale is Pärt’s Bogoroditse Dyevo (King’s 1990), at around fifty-nine
seconds; but it is so beautifully crafted and energetic that it does not feel as
short as it is.276
Like Cleobury, Sharpe will sometimes suggest texts if a composer asks for
guidance: the text may determine where in the service the commission will
appear, or conversely there may be a clear need for the carol commission to
sit in a particular place in the service, and thus that it should illuminate a given
text. Sharpe points out that a careful choice of text can ensure that the piece is
usable at other points in the liturgical year, rather than limiting it to the
Christmas season: this takes the pressure off rehearsal time, and gives added
275 KCAR/8/3/21/13- 276 Allegedly, although it was not possible to corroborate the suggestion, the short duration is connected to the fee available for commissioning at King’s, suggesting that Pärt was working to a rate per minute of music, rather than a rate per piece.
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value for money in the case of an expensive commission! He cites the example
of Marian texts (such as the Ave Maria, set by James Cave in 2016, or Ave maris
stella, set by Francis Grier in 2017), which can be used on Marian feasts and at
any point in the year to reflect on the Incarnation of Christ, rather than only at
Christmas.
Sharpe admits that he takes a deliberately more utilitarian approach than that
pursued at King’s: he needs to consider pragmatically how a particular
commission might be used in future. Such decisions are not driven solely by a
need to justify the expense of commission or time spent on rehearsal; but
there is a realism in this approach which Cleobury can afford to set aside.
Though not entirely unsympathetic to Thomas’ repeated criticism of a
‘utilitarian’ approach to commissioning in cathedrals, Sharpe points out that
realism does limit his choices. For example, the choir school at York is not a
boarding school; so that although both he and Cleobury will begin work on
their respective carol services immediately after their Advent Processions, he
has considerably less rehearsal time than at King’s in which to introduce the
new commission. Sharpe is pragmatic about the constraints of rehearsal time:
when a significant proportion of the choir will be new every Christmas and
there is a very large amount of repertoire to learn in between a heavy
schedule of extra services and concerts, it is unrealistic to need to devote
disproportionate amounts of time to a single piece.
Sharpe admits that in his choice of composers, and in the brief he gives to
them, he is more ‘risk-averse’ than Cleobury. Although he is committed to
encouraging contemporary composers, and ensures that there is always ‘at
least one piece by a living composer’ in every monthly music scheme, Sharpe’s
Christmas commissions have tended to go to composers who are already
known for writing choral music in a liturgical context. He also points out that
while composers in other fields would probably be sufficiently flattered to
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accept a King’s commission on the basis of its global reputation, York’s appeal
is more limited to existing enthusiasts of church music.277
The first York commission was by Richard Shephard. This was an astute
choice. Shephard was for many years head of the Minster School, and his music
is much more stylistically conservative than some of the subsequent
commissions. Choosing Shephard to compose the first Christmas commission
gave Sharpe an opportunity to begin the series with a work which would not
only have more general appeal, but which explicitly linked with York’s past. In
this way, he was able to build gently on Shephard’s commission to introduce
the concept of an annual commission. Sharpe has since gone on to commission
some major composers- notably David Briggs, Matthew Martin and Francis
Grier- who cannot fairly be accused of stylistic conservatism, as well as some
whose work is more immediately accessible.278
Despite the numerous difficulties with his overall argument, Martin Thomas is,
nonetheless, right to point out that the necessary constraints of writing for
voices do not have to result in boring or predictable music. Both Cleobury and
Sharpe acknowledge that the music they commission and direct is intended to
enable a congregation to worship: their respective carol services are liturgy, not
concerts. Both choirs do perform seasonal concerts in December as well, but
a distinction is made in the way the events are marketed and structured, and
the material in the concerts is limited to the more traditional, less musically
demanding repertoire. It could be argued that the televised version of the
King’s Nine Lessons, with its non-biblical readings on a chosen theme,
represents a mid-point between liturgical and concert performance: the annual
commission is not given an outing until the afternoon of Christmas Eve, but
277 The reaction of some composers to being asked to write for King’s seems to bear this out: see chapter 5. 278 The York commissions to date: Richard Shephard (2008), Paul Comeau (2009), Andrew Carter (2010), Stephen Jackson (2011), David Briggs (2012), Grayston Ives (2013), Matthew Martin (2014), Ben Rowarth (2015), James Cave (2016) and Francis Grier (2017).
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items can be commissioned for the televised service as well, such as Chilcott’s
Shepherd’s Carol (2000).279
New material in the carol service in any given year is not restricted to the
‘official’ commission. Other carols which were premiered at King’s, often by
composers with a strong connection to the college, include:
• Good day (Michael Ball, 1988)
• A Christmas Poem (Hugh Wood, 1990)
• Dormi Jesu (John Rutter, written for the TV Carols from King’s in 1998 and
performed in the following year’s Nine Lessons)
• The Shepherd’s Carol (Bob Chilcott, written for TV in 2000 and
performed on Christmas Eve in 2001)
• A spotless rose (Philip Ledger, 2002)
• Starry night o’er Bethlehem (David Willcocks, 2004)
• All bells in paradise (John Rutter, written for a double CD of carols
including several of the commissions, 2012)
In addition, organ voluntaries were commissioned in 2006 and 2007, at the
instigation of the then organ scholar.
All the commissioning projects examined in this chapter illustrate the need to
balance artistic and stylistic preference with attention to both form, context
and purpose. Cleobury suggests that the most successful of the King’s
commissions have been those which build on a traditional format, but extend
our understanding of the limits of that format. The following chapter will
therefore look in more detail at the King’s commissions, the factors affecting
their ongoing performance, and the contribution they have made to the wider
repertoire.
279 Coghlan (2015), 178-9, rightly identifies this as a model of contemporary carol writing for its ‘folk simplicity’.
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Chapter Five: Continuing the tradition: the King’s commissions since
1983
The carol commissions have been described as the ‘defining characteristic’ of
Stephen Cleobury’s tenure at King’s.280 As we have seen, Cleobury began to
commission new carols for the King’s College Festival of Nine Lessons and
Carols as an attempt to widen the perspective of church music beyond the
safe, familiar and stylistically undemanding. Over the last 35 years, the
commissions have proved that music for liturgical use continues to form part
of the living tradition of serious contemporary art music, and is not isolated
from it.
This has meant that some of the commissions have moved a very long way
from the definition of a carol with which this study began. For example, Giles
Swayne’s Winter Solstice Carol (1998) begins with an extensive, virtuosic flute
solo, which alters its character significantly from that of the average choir carol
and places it firmly in the category of art music. As Coghlan remarks, ‘it is all
but impossible to see the kinship between Swayne’s exquisite but inscrutable
carol… and the homespun directness of While Shepherds Watched.’281
• Musical extract 10: Winter Solstice Carol, Giles Swayne (King’s College
Choir/Cleobury, On Christmas Day CD 1 track 15)
Commissions like Swayne’s therefore force a re-evaluation of the question
with which we began: what is a carol, and what kind of music should it have?
To enter the mainstream repertoire, or even the narrower cathedral
repertoire, a piece needs to be attractive, relatively easy to learn for less
proficient singers or those with limited rehearsal time, and to reflect the text
in a way which makes sense both theologically and musically. These
280 Coghlan (2016), 174ff, includes an examination of several of the commissions. 281 Ibid., 176.
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requirements hold particularly true of a carol setting, because of the context in
which it will be sung; the congregation for a carol service anywhere is likely to
contain many people who are not regular churchgoers and may have no
familiarity with the liturgy, but who may have a particular expectation of what a
carol should sound like.282
It is impossible to examine every single commission in detail within the scope
of the present study. Instead I shall begin by exploring the process by which
King’s commissions are chosen, before going on to look at some broader
themes affecting the question of how and where a particular carol might be
received into the repertoire, using examples from a number of the
commissions to illustrate these.
It has already been acknowledged that Patton and Taylor’s compilation of
cathedral music lists between 1898 and 1998 can be of only limited use in the
present study, which extends twenty years after the last data it recorded.
However, it remains a useful methodological tool for the analysis of the first
fifteen years of the commissions in terms of their absorption into the
repertoire. Within those date constraints, Patton and Taylor can also establish
how much a given composer has written for use in a liturgical context; this in
turn gives an indication of the extent to which the commissions at King’s, and
their composers, relate to the wider context of music for the church.
Clearly, this methodology is limited and partial. Nevertheless, a good number
of the commissioned composers are indeed represented in Patton and Taylor:
Weir, Rutter, Bingham, Dove (whose own commission came later than 1998)
and Tavener appear multiple times, and a number of others for a single piece.
282 Walker (2014), appendix 9a, examines patterns of attendance at the Nine Lessons and Carols service in a rural cathedral . He establishes that demographics of attendance at such services are significantly younger than on an average Sunday, and that many of those who attend have little or no attachment to church otherwise. His questionnaire asking people to give their reasons for attending did not include reference to the music, but to issues such as comfort, reassurance and familiarity.
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Younger composers such as Gabriel Jackson would certainly have appeared in
a more recent edition if one existed; but the fact that only five of the
commissioned composers have a track record as liturgical composers
corroborates Cleobury’s claim to be ‘nourishing’ the tradition with influences
from outside it.
The 1992 Archbishops’ Council report on church music comments that ‘some
first performances [of a commission] also prove to be the last’.283 In order to
evaluate how often the King’s commissions have (or have not) been repeated
within the specific context for which they were written, I have examined the
orders of service for every King’s carol service since 1982. The frequency
with which the commissions have recurred in later services suggests a
deliberate shift in policy towards ‘single use’ performance as far as King’s itself
is concerned: no commission since Pärt’s Bogoroditse Dyevo (1990) has been
repeated in any subsequent Nine Lessons service. However, the fact that
several of the commissions also appear in published compilations- such as
Novello’s Christmas at King’s College (2009)- or on recordings, either by King’s
or other choirs, gives them a presence within the repertoire which is not
restricted to the choir for which they were composed.
Chapter 1 showed that, despite their flaws, both Thomas and Boyce-Tillman
raise some serious questions about how the purpose of church music is
understood and communicated through compositional style. The fact that
choral liturgical music has always been at the forefront of writing for voices
means that it does not always have to respond to developments elsewhere in
the classical canon. Rather, its familiarity with questions of vocal range and
technique gives it a platform to drive developments in understanding of what
voices can do; and thus to explore in new ways how voices can be employed in
283 In Tune with Heaven, 161.
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the worship of God. The King’s commissions demonstrate these processes in
action.
5.1 The process of commissioning: intention and practicalities
Stephen Cleobury has written extensively about the rationale behind the
annual commissions, including in the sleeve notes for the CD On Christmas
Night , the foreword to Coghlan’s Carols from King’s (2016), and in his article
for the Musical Times (1988). However, he has not spoken in so much detail
about the process of commissioning, or the particular brief he gives to
commissioned composers. I am therefore indebted to him for his willingness
to expand on the process and criteria he applies to commissioning each year’s
new carol. 284
For the most part, Cleobury does not go about planning the commissions in a
systematic way, with a particular composer or particular style in mind for the
coming year.285 Several are by Cambridge-based composers (Rutter, Goehr,
Holloway, Causton) or those with an existing King’s connection (Weir, Ades).
The opportunity to commission a particular composer has sometimes arisen
from a random encounter: for example, he first met Judith Weir (1985 and
2018) at a party in Cambridge and immediately asked if she would consider
composing for King’s. Other approaches have been made to composers
Cleobury already knew well, like Thomas Adès (1997), who had only recently
been a student at the college but whose prodigious gifts were already evident.
Harrison Birtwistle (2003) was conducting a concert in London at which King’s
were singing, and Cleobury asked ‘on spec’ if he would be interested in writing
for them; the response was extremely positive, and the result is one of the 284 Material in this section is taken with permission from a personal communication with Stephen Cleobury on 23/6/17. Examples of his writing about the rationale behind the commissions which were particularly helpful for this study include the sleeve notes for the CD On Christmas Night , the foreword to Coghlan’s Carols from King’s (2016), and his article for the Musical Times (1988). 285 Significant anniversaries (e.g. of a composer’s birth or death) tend to be an exception. In 2015, the year of David Willcocks’ death, almost the entire service was shaped around his arrangements and descants.
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most stylistically interesting of the commissions, though Coghlan’s description
of it as a ‘curdled lullaby… more primitive wail than soothing song’ offers no
comfort to those who want the Nine Lessons and Carols to remain ‘in a state
of nostalgic suspension’.286
• Musical extract 11: The Gleam, Harrison Birtwistle (On Christmas Day CD
2 track 2)
Perhaps inevitably, in the light of this, Cleobury has no clear picture of a
compositional style he wishes to promote; or, for that matter, which he would
reject. Instead, he looks for ‘composers who will challenge us but we would be
able to do it well’. While he is willing to take more risks than Robert Sharpe
can with his choir at York, Cleobury does admit: ‘I wouldn’t ask anyone who is
‘too avant-garde’, because that isn’t what we do’.
Carl Vine, commissioned in 2012, comments in the programme note at the
front of the published score that ‘a commission to compose a carol for King’s
College Choir [is] one of the most prized opportunities available to my
profession’.287 The text he chose to set, Tennyson’s Ring out, wild bells, is, as he
acknowledges, not about the Nativity as such but touches on fundamental
Christian values. Such an approach to text makes it possible for composers to
set with integrity words which may not reflect their own beliefs. Cleobury is
clearly sensitive to this possibility: his wife Emma keeps a bank of suitable texts
which can be offered as inspiration. In this way King’s can still approach
composers who are not religious and would struggle to set a liturgical or
conventionally religious text with integrity, but whose musical voices
nonetheless have something exciting to offer the liturgy. Older texts or more
poetic, non-Scriptural reflections can enable such composers to write in their
286 Coghlan (2016), 183. 287 Vine, Ring out, wild bells (Faber 2012)
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own voice, while contributing something new to the genre and the Nine
Lessons and Carols format. 288
Composers sometimes set their own words (Swayne, 2002; Rautavaara, 2010),
find others to write a text specifically for the occasion (Causton, 2015), or
choose their own text. There are examples in the archive of Cleobury turning
down offers, including one or two from quite well known composers, to set
texts which he does not consider suitable for the carol service.289 Despite
Thomas’ reservations, Cleobury is as resolute as Milner-White could have
wished that ‘the music needs to know its place’ and that the text should
predominate.
In terms of the specific information Cleobury gives to composers: ‘three or
four minutes is the usual length, but not everyone sticks to that brief.’ In fact, a
significant number of the commissions are well over that length. Appendix 1
includes the duration of each carol, demonstrating that eleven of the
commissions are five minutes or longer in duration (the longest being James
MacMillan’s Seinte Marie Moder Milde (1995), at seven and a half. Only two are
less than two minutes long: Bogoroditse Dyevo (1990), as described in the
previous chapter, and the first of Richard Rodney Bennett’s two carols, Nowel
Nowel Holly Dark (1986). The average length is just over four minutes; but as
several of the commissions have demonstrated, four minutes is enough to
create a significant impact.290
288 Cleobury made reference in this respect to John Woolrich, whose Spring in Winter (2001) sets a text by the visionary poet Christopher Smart, also famously responsible for the text of Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb. Although the text is clearly Christian, Woolrich’s approach to word-setting manages to make it clear that he is not: in the lower voices, Smart’s last line, ‘Of the very world He made’ is truncated into ‘of the very world made’, which gives a completely different theological perspective. 289 KCAR 8/3/21/13- contains at least two examples of Cleobury’s replies to such approaches; unfortunately, neither of them make it clear what the rejected texts were 290 Not always a positive impact, however: one response to the extended tonality of Diana Burrell’s Christo paremus cantica (1993) was an outraged ‘Annus horribilis! How could you do such a thing?’ (quoted in Coghlan, 2016, 128).
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Cleobury comments that, like Ben Nicholas at Merton, ‘I sometimes give them
advice about vocal range’.291 He will also offer advice as to whether there are
voices in any given part who would be suitable for a solo, or whether it would
be better to write tutti parts. The commissions between them contain every
possible variation of response to this; some include punishingly high tessitura
or divisi, and a good number include solos, of varying complexity. Cleobury ‘s
advice to one composer was ‘normally SATB with some divisi if he likes, and
perhaps a solo part, though this is by no means necessary’.292
The increasing use of more extended vocal techniques can be tracked
throughout the 35 years of the commissions: while earlier carols were
relatively simple, more recent commissions suggest an acute awareness of the
potential of this occasion for advertising the range and skill of a composer, as
well as that of the choir. In his sleeve notes to the centenary CD 100 Years of
Nine Lessons and Carols, Day comments that today’s choir is undoubtedly more
skilled and professional than the choir of 1918.293 It might not be fair to say
that the same is true of the composers; but they are perhaps less reticent
about tempering their skill to the context of the liturgy, or less convinced of
the need to do so, than would have been the case in 1918, and still even at the
time of the first commissions in the 1980s.
An examination of the orders of service since 1983 reveals that it is not only
the featured commissions which represent King’s’ ongoing commitment to
contemporary repertoire. Mathias, Birtwistle, Sculthorpe, Carter, Bullard,
Sandström, Joubert, Tavener, Panufnik, Grier, Rütti and Manz were all
represented during their lifetime, though several of them have since died. John
Scott was honoured after his untimely death in 2015 by a performance of Nova,
291 A letter to Peter Sculthorpe concerning the brief for The Birthday of thy King (1988) includes a chart with the vocal range in all four voice parts; the treble range is given as ‘middle C to top A flat’. (KCAR 8/3/21/13-, dated 24/6/88) 292 Letter to Peter Sculthorpe’s publisher, October 1988. 293 100 Years of Nine Lessons and Carols (KGS 0033, 2018)
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nova, alongside several arrangements by Willcocks who had died the same year
aged 95. In this way a continuing link is ensured both with the ‘mainstream’ of
classical composition and with the latest developments in composition for the
context of worship.
The list of composers not yet commissioned to write for King’s contains some
surprising omissions: based on their previous output, and the commissions
they have received from other high-profile liturgical choirs, Nico Muhly,294
Tarik O’Regan, Matthew Martin, Kerry Andrew, Eriks Esenvalds and Julian
Anderson might all reasonably be asked to contribute. As discussed in chapter
4, many of these were indeed commissioned for the Merton Choirbook; and
though he was not commissioned by Merton, O’Regan contributed to the
Choirbook for the Queen. Cleobury has said that if he were not retiring in 2019,
he would have liked to approach John Adams for a commission.295
Although Cleobury’s only negative stipulation was to avoid the avant-garde, on
the basis of those whom he has approached it is also possible to speculate that
he is unlikely to commission from those at the opposite end of the spectrum
either. Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen, although they would be popular
with American audiences, are possibly too populist in style to present enough
challenge for King’s: among British composers, the same may possibly apply to
composers such as Will Todd or Richard Shephard. While there were
excellent reasons for commissioning Shephard at York, Martin Thomas is fairly
scathing about Shephard’s music in his overview of modern composers writing
within the ‘church music’ idiom. Although his pastiche style and reliance on
294 In 2018 Muhly collaborated with King’s College Choir and the King’s Singers on To Stand in this House, a commission to mark the 50th anniversary of the King’s Singers. Along with a new work by Francis Grier, lit by holy fire, Muhly’s piece has been made available in digital format only. Both are expressly marketed as evidence of King’s’ ongoing commitment to new music. http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/news/2018/kings-record-label-supports-new-music (accessed 27/6/18) 295 Interview with Alison Karlin on Bachtrack website, https://bachtrack.com/interview-stephen-cleobury-kings-college-cambridge-choral-month-march-2019 (accessed 28/03/19)
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folk tunes is true to the origins of the carol genre, it does not push stylistic
boundaries in the way Thomas wishes to encourage.296
5.2 Issues affecting absorption into the repertoire
There are numerous factors affecting whether a particular carol is or is not
absorbed into the repertoire after first performance; both in terms of the
technical challenge they present, and wider questions about preserving balance
in programming. It is also true to say that there are two possible measures of
‘success’ in terms of absorption into the repertoire. If the success, or
otherwise, of a particular carol is equated with frequency of repetition, then
few of them can be regarded as successful on a big scale. Some of the
commissions have been repeated at King’s alone; others more widely.
However, Cleobury’s desire that the tradition should be constantly refreshed
has made him less and less likely to schedule any of the commissions more
than once, and only a tiny handful (mostly from earlier in the series) have been
repeated more frequently. The fact that a carol is not repeated more than
once at King’s itself does not make it bad music, though some of them certainly
raise questions about accessibility to either congregation or performers. Using
both the service sheets for every carol service at King’s between 1983 and
2016, and for the earlier commissions Patton and Taylor’s lists of music
performed in cathedrals before 1998, provides some indicators of how the
‘success’ of a particular commission might be measured, both at King’s itself
and beyond it.297
However, there is another layer to the question of absorption into the
repertoire. Chapters 2 and 3 explored how the status of King’s as an exemplar
of a particular choral style, perpetuated through broadcasts and recordings,
296 Thomas singles out Shephard’s ‘O for a thousand tongues’ (1987) as an example of the ‘antiquated’ style he wishes to critique (2015), 168-174. 297 Patton and Taylor (2000).
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generated interest not only in their sound but in the material they performed
in it. Appendix 1 will set out in table form some of the factors which might
have an impact on whether or not a commission is absorbed into the
repertoire: for example length, vocal forces and instrumental accompaniment
(if any).
The commissions have not only enriched the carol service at King’s itself; they
have also encouraged other colleges, churches and cathedrals to perform the
works which began at King’s and to embark on commissions of their own. In
this way, King’s has clearly proved an effective agent in encouraging
composition for the church- both by composers who were still too young to
appear in Patton and Taylor (e.g. Gabriel Jackson, Tansy Davies, Richard
Causton), and by more established composers for whom writing for the
church was a new or relatively unusual development (Woolrich, Birtwistle).
Either way, the King’s commissions clearly represent a breaking down of the
perceived barriers between ‘church music’ and ‘serious art music’, and thus
present an important challenge to Thomas’ argument that music for the liturgy
is stylistically backward and isolated.
Among the features most likely to affect whether or not a carol passes into the
repertoire, the most obvious is demanding vocal range and use of vocal forces.
A number of the commissions are scored for double choir, or include several
divisions: Vine (2012), Holloway (2002) and Adès (1997) require as many as
ten separate voice parts. Others include extensive scoring for one or more
solo treble, solo male voices, or a varied male line, to which many parish
choirs do not have access. Goehr’s Carol of St Steven, with its complex and
extensive solo writing in two different voice parts, is a good example.
• Musical extract 12: Carol of St Steven, Alexander Goehr (On Christmas
Day CD 1 track 13)
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Many of the King’s commissions are intended to be sung unaccompanied;
voices are, by definition, the most universally accessible instrument of all. But
the technical demands which can be made on the trained voices of King’s choir
may not be met so successfully by less competent groups. MacMillan’s
characteristic ‘Scotch snap’ decoration, Goehr’s portamento, Rautavaara’s
extremely high tessitura, and Dean’s frequent changes in dynamic and time
signature, all transform the carol from Dearmer’s ‘simple and hilarious’ folk
song into professional art music. Rautavaara requires treble 1 to sing a c’’’ in
the second bar of their first entry:
Fig. 4: Rautavaara, Offerings they brought of gold (2010, bars 4-7)
Some of the commissions have organ parts of varying complexity, including
some with quite specific registration marks. The most extensive organ part in
any of the commissions is probably Rutti’s (2014): Fig. 5 below does not show
the most technically demanding passage, but one indicating the need for
extreme rhythmic precision and accuracy which pervades the whole piece.
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Fig. 5: Organ part from Rutti, De Virgine Maria (2014), bars 53-7
The inclusion of other instruments (such as flute or strings) is arguably more
true to the popular and extra-ecclesiastical origin of the carol than a piano or
organ part, especially a virtuosic one. Cleobury comments ‘we usually don’t
have much room for instruments, because the chapel is so full’: the flautist in
Swayne’s Winter Solstice Carol performed from the organ loft. However, in a
climate in which competence in a musical instrument is becoming restricted to
an ever smaller elite, a carol with any instrumental parts is no longer as
universally accessible as it would once have been.298
Fig. 6: flute part from Swayne, Winter Solstice Carol (1998), bar 46-7
298 The InHarmony report (2017, 56) found that music groups in churches included a range of instruments from the guitar (64 churches) to the mouth organ, accordion and tenor horn (1 church each).
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In the case of Swayne’s carol, the technical ability required for the flute
accompaniment make it less accessible still to the majority of choirs.
A carol, strictly speaking, is not meant to be an anthem.299 Cleobury
acknowledges that some of the commissions have perhaps ‘gone too far in that
direction’. Alexander Goehr’s Carol of St Steven (1989), and Robin Holloway’s
Christmas Carol (2002) are both more like miniature cantatas than a true carol
and include extended solo parts.300 In Goehr’s carol, a treble (Steven) and a
bass (Herod) dialogue with each other for several bars in a series of chromatic
quavers, before the treble is left with the last word. In Holloway’s, the solo
tenor has to negotiate complex dotted rhythms at a high tessitura for three
pages, over an equally complex accompaniment.
Fig. 7: Holloway , Christmas Carol (2002); tenor solo, bars 91-3
Choirs with limited rehearsal time may be discouraged from performing carols
set in other languages, such as Huw Watkins’ Carol Eliseus (2017), the first ever
commission in Welsh. However, that does not seem to have inhibited the
299 Gant (2014) and Coghlan (2016) both comment on the emergence of the ‘carol-anthem’ among the King’s commissions. 300 The description ‘mini-cantata’ comes from Holloway’s own composer’s note in the cover of his carol, but it applies equally well to Goehr’s. Both are among the longest of the commissions, at almost seven minutes.
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popularity of Pärt’s Bogoroditse Dyevo (1990), with text in Church Slavonic, or
Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem (1985), which is one of several carols in which some
or all of the text is in Latin.
Challenging tonality, harmonic structure, and frequent shifts in time signature is
a feature of several of the commissions: while some have a clear key signature
to which they remain anchored throughout, Sculthorpe’s description of his
Birthday of thy King (1988) (‘it begins in a kind of C minor, with boys’ voices
singing loudly in 5ths… and ends loudly in a kind of F major’) is not
untypical.301 Holloway’s Christmas Carol (2002) changes time signature in every
section. The rhythmic accuracy and precision demanded by the acoustic is
reflected in the preponderance of dotted rhythms and staccato in many of the
commissions.
Although there is not space here to analyse any of the commissions in real
depth, Brett Dean’s Here comes the dawn (2007) manages to demonstrate
several of these features within the space of a few bars:
301 A letter from Sculthorpe to his publisher on delivery of the carol, 19/10/88.
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Fig. 8: Brett Dean, Here comes the dawn (2007), bars 28-32
5.3 After the first performance: what happens to commissions?
Michael Nicholas states that even commissions composed for a specific
occasion are not merely for that one performance, but for the repertoire as a
whole.302 Although many commissions, at King’s and elsewhere, have a
relatively short shelf-life, the more successful commissions are ‘world-making’,
in that they create a sound world which, once heard, cannot be unimagined.
Judith Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem (1985), for example, is utterly distinctive and
surprising on first hearing, but has become a small classic: it is not accidental
302 Nicholas, personal communication 17/8/2016.
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that it is one of the most enduringly popular of the King’s commissions, and
one of the most frequently repeated.
Although only four or five of the King’s commissions since 1983 have achieved
a high level of penetration into the general repertoire of cathedrals and
collegiate choirs, Cleobury considers his ‘strike rate’ to be quite successful;
those four or five (roughly one in seven) certainly represent a far higher
percentage than the Choirbook for the Queen or even the Merton Choirbook.303
However, that may reflect the fact that the King’s commissions have been
around for longer and as yet have a higher profile than other commissioning
projects; this may also explain why it is the earlier commissions which tend to
be the best known, suggesting that the rate of absorption into the repertoire is
not rapid.
Cleobury acknowledges that most of the commissions are not repeated often
within the Nine Lessons service itself; as we have seen, this is because he
believes it is important to balance old and new within the overall structure of
the service. Some are never performed again apart from recordings: ‘perhaps
they should be, but we don’t want to keep repeating them every year or they
would replace the real ‘folk’ items which have been part of the Nine Lessons
format since the beginning’.
Analysis suggests that so far, although there is no source equivalent to Patton
and Taylor to quantify this precisely, few of the post-1998 commissions have
been absorbed into the wider repertoire elsewhere either: the most successful
of the last 20 years has probably been Dove’s The three kings (2000), which has
become a staple of the repertoire in cathedrals. Although this is one of the
handful of King’s commissions to have been widely taken up by other choirs,
and is also recognisably a carol (in lullaby form, with its deliberately archaic
303 See chapter 4 for comparative statistics.
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refrain O balow, balow la lay), Cleobury has not chosen to revisit it in the
context for which it was originally written.
Yet the music of Willcocks is not the only example of music commissioned or
written for the Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s which has since entered the
mainstream choral repertoire. Going back to the early days of the King’s
commissions, Rutter’s What sweeter music? (1987) has become a mainstay of
the Christmas repertoire at amateur as well as professional levels. It is listed by
its publishers, Oxford, as ‘easy’ and thus within the range of most school or
parish choirs. Its beautifully crafted use of the carol’s typical ‘strophic dance’
form make it attractive to sing: amateur choirs may at first glance be daunted
by its key signature of G flat major, but it is not technically demanding. It has
been performed again at King’s four times, and appears in Patton and Taylor in
the repertoire of ten choirs: it must by now have far exceeded that number.
Another of the early commissions, Judith Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem (1985)
offers a more challenging, but still very singable, option which has been taken
up by a number of cathedral choirs and is now considered part of the
mainstream repertoire of more competent ensembles.304 Weir takes the
stanza-burden form and mediaeval text of the classic carol format, but clothes
it in new harmonic structures so that when the refrain ‘Illuminare Jerusalem’
recurs, it does not do so predictably, but in a way which creates and builds
anticipation. She also writes with close attention to the rhythmic precision
demanded by the building and its acoustic; though she also acknowledges that
knowing the acoustic well may not be an advantage: ‘if you write for a
particular situation, it may not happen that way’. Speaking in an Omnibus
documentary on the choir in 1992, Weir remarked that Illuminare Jerusalem
was ‘inspired by the height of the chapel’ in relation to its length: the building, 304 Rutter collaborated with Willcocks as editor on several volumes of the seminal Carols for Choirs series. Although Rutter’s reputation as a composer is not uncontroversial, he has inherited Willcocks’ mantle, at least in popular perception, as greatest living exponent of the Christmas carol genre.
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which she knew well from her own time as an undergraduate, seemed to call
for a ‘light, bright sound’, with very high sounds for the boys and very low
sounds for the basses and organ. A chorister interviewed in the same
programme commented that the ‘discordant’ quality of Weir’s music made it
‘interesting’ to sing.305 Weir’s carol O mercy divine, with a cello part played by
former King’s chorister Guy Johnston, was commissioned in 2018 for the 100th
anniversary of the service.
Illuminare Jerusalem is another exception to Cleobury’s preference not to
repeat commissions. It has received repeat performances in ten subsequent
Christmas Eve services, more than any other of the commissions. It also
appears in Patton and Taylor (2000) as part of the repertoire of six
cathedral/collegiate choirs, one of which must be King’s itself: again, the
number now would be much higher.
• Musical extract 13: Illuminare Jerusalem, Judith Weir (On Christmas Day
CD 1 track 11)
Although it was written for the choir at King’s, Tavener’s The Lamb (1982)
predates Cleobury’s appointment as Director of Music, so it was not a
commission in the same way as the post-1983 carols. Since it was composed
specifically for King’s, however, it therefore demonstrates an existing desire on
the part of the choir to work with contemporary composers before
Cleobury’s arrival, so it offers an interesting comparison to the intentional
commissions. The Lamb is among the most frequently performed Christmas
items among those which were originally written for King’s: it has also
appeared in the King’s service on ten subsequent occasions, and is listed by
Patton and Taylor in the repertoire of 21 choirs.
305 Judith Weir and Michael Pearce, interviewed in King’s College Choir (Omnibus series 30 episode 14, BBC, 1992)
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Other commissions to have been repeated by King’s itself are Maxwell Davies’
One star, at last (1984), which has been sung again three times at subsequent
King’s services, but according to Patton and Taylor did not appear anywhere
else except at King’s; Rutter’s What sweeter music (1987), repeated five times at
King’s and in the repertoire of nine other choirs by 1998; and Pärt’s Bogoroditse
Dyevo (1990), repeated six times at King’s. Perhaps surprisingly, at the time
Patton and Taylor was published, Bogoroditse Dyevo was only listed in the
repertoire of a single choir, presumably King’s itself. It too is now considerably
more widely performed, but it is worth remembering that at the time of the
commission in 1990, Pärt was nowhere near as well known in the West as he
is now. A letter in the King’s archives, complaining at the absence of detailed
listings for the service in that year’s Radio Times which would have given
information on the commission, admits disarmingly that its author had enjoyed
Pärt’s piece but was unsure of how to spell his name.306
Were a survey similar to Patton and Taylor to be attempted now, it would
probably show very different patterns of adoption by other choirs, not just for
the older commissions but also some of the newer ones, not least those which
appear in published carol compilations. However, the information available in
Patton and Taylor was already demonstrating by 1998 that patterns of
repetition within the King’s service itself were not necessarily reflected in what
happened to the commissions elsewhere.
5.4 Carols for today
All but one of the commissions are published, and all but the most recent have
been recorded: so there should not be issues preventing choirs who wish to
sing any of the commissions from accessing them in order to do so. The
exception is Muldowney’s Mary (2008): it remains unpublished, making it
306 KCAR 8/3/21/13-
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unlikely that other choirs will perform it, although it has been recorded. Some
appear in multiple places, including anthologies specifically designed as
resources for liturgical performance such as Christmas at King’s: Carols, Hymns
and Seasonal Anthems for Mixed Voices (Novello 2009), which has given new
exposure to some of the less well-known commissions, such as the first of the
series, Lennox Berkeley’s In Wintertime (1983).
Successive visits to music shops which stock Christmas choral repertoire
revealed that the only commissions which were readily available to buy off the
shelf, even in December, were Dove’s Three Kings, Rutter’s What sweeter
music? and the Novello compilation books (Noel 1-3) containing a number of
the most recent commissions. By contrast, they had several different
arrangements of other carols by Rutter, Chilcott, and Wilberg, whose only
contribution to the King’s repertoire so far has been his arrangement of Ding
dong! merrily on high, with its organ part suggestive of an ascending and
descending peal of bells.
Cleobury is certainly aware of the popular appeal of more accessible
Christmas music, and is not averse to harnessing that appeal at least in the
televised Carols for King’s if not so readily in the Nine Lessons and Carols itself.
He responds to Thomas’ allegations that music written specifically for the
liturgy is of a lower and less demanding quality by remarking ‘I’m not knocking
the Chilcotts and the Rutters’. These two composers have both made
something of a specialism of writing carols, and indeed both have written for
King’s, but their work is regarded with disdain by some musicians because of
its deliberately accessible quality. The debates over taste in church music with
which this study began are alive and well in the world of the carol.
Coghlan suggests that the association between carols and nostalgic escapism
has only ever been part of the story. Alongside the cosy images of Christmas
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sit the darker realities of violence and grief, as referenced centuries ago in the
Coventry Carol. Through the means of the carol, the less palatable aspects of
humanity are also brought into contact with the mystery of the Incarnation.307
This process continues to be reflected in the King’s commissions. As
mentioned in the previous chapter, Richard Causton’s The Flight (2015) was a
deliberate attempt to bring the most pressing themes of the twenty-first
century into dialogue with the Biblical narrative. Written with George Szirtes,
who was himself a refugee from Hungary and had witnessed the desperation of
migrants trying to cross Europe against a backdrop of panicky border closures
and rising xenophobia in the summer of 2015, his carol is both very much
related to the precise moment of its composition, and a timeless reflection on
the universal meaning of the Incarnation. Its technical demands (including two
repeated treble solos with a very high tessitura, sustaining a#’’/b’’ for up to
fourteen beats, over a SATB texture with further divisi), may limit its
penetration into the repertoire at the amateur level, but for a capable choir it
would make a valuable addition to a liturgy which wishes to demonstrate
cultural relevance.
• Musical extract 14: The Flight, Richard Causton (OUP Choral Highlights
2016 track 17)
Cleobury comments that the commissions which have achieved the highest
levels of popularity and penetration into the repertoire are those which
correspond most closely to carol form: with the possible exception of
Bogoroditse Dyevo, that seems to be borne out by observable patterns of
repetition both at and beyond King’s. However, that recognition has not
resulted in a lessening of the quality of successive commissions. Even the
simpler (or perhaps just more immediately accessible) of the King’s
commissions represent some of the best choral writing there is. Cleobury 307 Coghlan (2016), 183.
141
remains clear that the aim of the King’s commissions has been more to
encourage composers who are not associated (primarily or at all) with church
music to consider writing for the liturgy. If a carol is a folk item, or words set
to a dance tune, some of the commissions have indeed travelled a very long
way from those origins. The fact that the ones that have penetrated the wider
repertoire are those which correspond more closely to the popular idea of the
carol does not in any way invalidate the quality of those which do not.
One recent commission which clearly does conform closely to the classic carol
format is Berkeley’s This Endernight (2016). Alternating between a lilting 4/4
verse and a refrain in 6/4, between solo and tutti and between unison and
harmony, Berkeley’s is not one of the more challenging commissions. Its
moderate tessitura and easily memorised melody place it within the grasp of
amateur as well as professional choirs.
• Musical extract 15: This Endernight, Michael Berkeley (OUP Christmas
Choral Highlights 2017 track 9)
In contrast to Martin Thomas’ fears that church music must necessarily be
stylistically limited, the continued willingness of composers of international
stature to accept commissions from King’s demonstrates not only that skilled
‘mainstream’ musicians are still willing to write for the church and for choirs,
but that they do so in richly varied ways which neither dumb down their skill
nor blunt their natural voice. Gabriel Jackson, commissioned in 2009, said of
the experience: 'While writing the piece I was thinking all the time about the
wondrous space that is the King's Chapel, the special atmosphere of the
service, the acoustic of the building, and the unique sound of the King's choir in
that building. Now that it is finished I cannot wait for Christmas Eve, to be
142
there in the Chapel at King's and to hear my piece quietly take its place in the
age-old rite, as Stephen and his choir work their magic once again.'308
308 http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/events/chapel-services/archive/nine-lessons , accessed 25/06/18
143
Conclusion
Liturgical music is not primarily intended for entertainment, in the sense of
requiring no active engagement from the listener.309 Nor is it primarily
intended to provide comfort, or to bolster existing preferences. Music written
for a church context is intended for use in worship, which is different from
secular performance. It works with and illustrates the story of the faith; as
such, it can be used (in both form and content) to stretch, to educate and to
inform: it can provoke a sense of wonder and push back our boundaries of the
possible. Although liturgical music should not be entirely utilitarian, in the sense
that it needs to maintain some artistic integrity, the necessarily close
relationship between music and context is what makes liturgical music
distinctive from other classical genres.
Music written for performance during the Christmas season, especially carol
music, may be likely to have a larger audience than church music generally
might. It therefore gives composers an opportunity to say something which is
musically interesting, as well as theologically and liturgically, to a broader range
of people than might buy a classical CD or attend a church service at another
time of year. Composers of commissioned carols are therefore given an
opportunity to speak to an audience who might not naturally choose to listen
to new music. Christmas music is easily co-opted into a sentimentalised easy-
listening model, rather than the challenge – whether moral or stylistic- implied
by pieces like Causton’s The Flight, or Birtwistle’s The Gleam. The King’s
commissions represent a refusal to fall into that trap, by ensuring that both
text and music engage in some way with the reality of the present-day context.
It could even be argued that liturgical music for Christmas demands a more
309 Arnold (2014), xiv: Evensong is not a concert but ‘a sort of contract between priest, reader, musician, listener, worshipper and God’.
144
challenging musical form in order to convey the shockingly unexpected
mystery of the Incarnation.
At the same time, if that theological reality is to be effectively communicated,
the musical vehicle for the message must be one to which congregations can
relate in worship. What makes for a good recording is not necessarily the
same as what will work in the context of the liturgy. Nonetheless, the carol
commissions at King’s and elsewhere have demonstrated that new musical
forms and developments are still emerging without doing violence to either the
message or its liturgical purpose.
Church music is not an unchanging tradition. The recent reconstruction of
Truro’s 1880 service almost certainly did not sound like the original, however
faithful the order of service; fashions in vocal training have changed, and so has
the age of the average member of the back row. The standard of music
performed by collegiate and cathedral choirs for use in church has risen
enormously, and continues to improve, so that there are now far more choirs
capable of singing difficult music than there would have been when the Nine
Lessons and Carols service began. Church music in the later 20th and early 21st
century does demand higher performance standards; more exploration of the
physical limits of the voice as a vehicle for both music and text; more solos and
descant and decoration; more use of specialised skills like pitched speech and
aleatoric passages. All of this implies a move away from the understanding of
the carol as a ‘vernacular’ form; yet the fact remains that those commissions
which have most readily found a regular home in the repertoire beyond King’s
are those which conform to the stanza-burden format of the true carol.
Despite the gloomy view of Martin Thomas, there is quite clearly a deliberate
attempt in many places, including King’s, to enlarge the repertoire by
imaginative commissioning, thereby challenging the perception that church
145
music is isolated from the rest of serious music in a cul-de-sac of low standards
and minimal creativity. The writing of Gabriel Jackson and Jonathan Harvey, for
example, suggests that composing for the church can be just as exciting and
challenging as writing for other contexts. In recent years the Merton Choirbook
and Choirbook for the Queen have seen deliberate attempts to attract interesting
new music for a church context. Longer-standing links between new music and
the liturgy of the church have been maintained over a number of years by the
Edington Festival, and the Festival of Contemporary Music which is now hosted
at St Pancras, having begun at Norwich Cathedral under Michael Nicholas. The
annual New Music Wells festival, and Ripon Cathedral’s New Music Week, are
other examples of active collaboration between cathedrals and composers.
Collegiate choirs and choral foundations in the ‘greater churches’ also
commission new music. When the works are published, all of these avenues
gives choirs anywhere a supply of new material to work with. The public
profile of King’s means that it has more opportunities than many choirs to
share its new music with the world, but it is by no means alone in ensuring that
music for the liturgy remains a lively and evolving genre.
The carol, and the evolution of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from
its beginnings in Truro, amply illustrate the role of King’s in beginning to open
up the whole genre of liturgical and devotional music as an appropriate arena
for musical innovation. Nearly everything we now associate with the traditions
of the Nine Lessons and Carols, save for the lessons themselves, has changed
since Sir David Willcocks’ return to King’s in 1957. His carol descants and the
publication of Carols for Choirs 1 marked the beginning of an entirely fresh
approach to the Christmas repertoire, in which the oldest of stories could be
retold in new ways and with deliberately contemporary resonances. Sixty years
after his appointment as director of music at King’s, that legacy is still being
developed. He was not the first to think of the Nine Lessons and Carols
146
format, nor did he have the final word in innovation, but the Willcocks era was
the one in which church music proved that it could collaborate effectively with
both the people’s music in the form of the carol, and the skill-set of the
professional classical musician.
The King’s carol commissions contribute to the renewal of church music in
several ways: through the redefinition and extension of the expected limits of
the carol format, through the attainment of increasingly high performance
standards which stretch awareness of what the human voice is capable of, and
through the attraction of some of the most innovative composers to write
music in a genre they might not otherwise have considered. They provide a
bridge between the serious art music of the concert hall and the popular music
which the church appropriated in the first place to create the Christian carol,
and thus defy the artificial distinction others would make between ‘church
music’ and ‘the rest of music’. They challenge perceptions as to what can and
should be sung in the context of worship. They revivify ancient texts through
their application to the most pressing of contemporary social issues.
King’s College Choir did not set out to establish a choral gold standard, but
nonetheless came not only to create but to embody one. Through its catalogue
of broadcasts and recordings, plus a century of increasingly professional
approaches to daily rehearsal and performance under successive Directors of
Music, King’s has shaped expectations for choral sound, even among choirs
with different vocal forces, or who perform predominantly outside the
liturgical context. The carol commissions since 1983 are by no means the only
examples of commitment to new music in our collegiate and cathedral choirs,
but they form a measurable contribution to the repertoire of music written
specifically for the liturgy of the church, which stands comparison with the best
innovations elsewhere in the classical world.
147
Appendix 1: Detailed analysis of the King’s commissions and their
place in the repertoire
1982*
Before
Stephen
Cleobury’s
tenure so
not part of
the ‘annual
commission’
policy, but
included for
comparison
The Lamb
Words: William Blake
Music: John Tavener
Publisher: Chester Music
Unaccompanied SATB
Duration: 3 minutes 20
Appears in Patton and Taylor (2000) as part of the repertoire of
21 choirs
Subsequently sung at King’s in the Nine Lessons and Carols
services in 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1993, 2001, 2003, 2011, 2013,
2017
148
1983 In Wintertime
Words: Betty Askwith
Music: Lennox Berkeley
Publisher: Chester Music
SAATB with optional organ
Duration: 2 minutes 45
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Not listed in Patton and Taylor, though other compositions by
Berkeley are included
Not sung again in 9L+C but published as part of the Christmas at
King’s College compilation (Novello 2009)
1984 One Star, at Last
Words: George Mackay Brown
Music: Peter Maxwell Davies
Publisher: Chester Music SATB unaccompanied
Duration: 3 minutes
Place in service: after 4th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 1 choir
Sung again: 1985, 2009, 2014
149
1985 Illuminare Jerusalem
Words: adapted from the Bannatyne Manuscript
Music: Judith Weir
Publisher: Novello
SATB with divisi and organ
Duration: 2 minutes 30
Place in service: after 4th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 6 choirs
Sung again: 1986, 1989, 1993, 1996, 2001, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013,
2017
150
1986 Nowel, Nowel, Holly Dark
Words: Walter de la Mare
Music: Richard Rodney Bennett
Publisher: Novello
SAATTBB a cappella.
Duration: 1 minute 40
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0, but other works by Bennett are listed
Sung again: no.
1987 What Sweeter Music
Words: Robert Herrick
Music: John Rutter
Publisher: OUP
SSATBB and organ
Duration: 5 minutes
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 10 choirs
Sung again: 1991, 2005, 2008, 2015
Also appears in Novello compilation
151
1988 The Birthday of thy King
Words: after Henry Vaughan
Music: Peter Sculthorpe
Publisher: Faber
Unaccompanied SSATBB, no solo.
Duration: 3 minutes
Place in service: before 1st lesson
A cappella with rehearsal piano part.
Patton and Taylor: 0 (no mention of other works by Sculthorpe)
Not sung again in 9L+C but appears in Novello compilation
1989 Carol of St. Steven
Words: Adapted from W. Sandys' Christmas Carols (1833)
Music: Alexander Goehr
Publisher: Schott
SATB with soli
Duration: 4 minutes
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0
Sung again: no
152
1990 Богородице Дево, радуйся
(Rejoice, O Virgin Mary)
Words: Orthodox Liturgy
Music: Arvo Pärt
Publisher; Universal Editions
Duration: 1 minute
SATB, doubled to SSAATTBB bars 23-25. Unaccompanied.
Place in service: before 6th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 1 choir
Sung again: 1991, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2007, 2011
Also appears in Novello compilation
1991 A Gathering
Words: Lancelot Andrewes, Sermon XVI
Music: John Casken
Publisher: Schott Unaccompanied SATB with divisi
Duration: 5 minutes 30
Place in service: after 2nd lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0
Sung again: no
153
1992 Swetë Jesu
Words: Anonymous, 13th century (Middle English)
Music: Nicholas Maw
Place in service: after 4th lesson
Publisher: Faber
Duration: 5 minutes
Unaccompanied SATB (treble divisi last 4 bars)
Patton and Taylor: 0
but other works by Maw listed
Sung again: no
1993 Christo Paremus Cantica
Words: Anonymous, 15th century
Music: Diana Burrell
Publisher: none given Unaccompanied SATB with divisi
Duration: 3 minutes 20
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0 but other works by Burrell listed
Sung again: no
Appears in Novello compilation
154
1994 The Angels
Words: John V. Taylor
Music: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher: Faber
For unaccompanied chorus (2 choirs of SATB plus divisi, so
requires a total of 10 parts)
Duration: 5 minutes
Place in service: after 2nd lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0 but other works by Harvey listed
Sung again: no
1995 Seinte Marie Moder Milde
Words: 13th century
Music: James MacMillan
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
SATB (with divisi) and organ
Duration: 7 minutes 30
Place in service: before 6th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0 but other works by MacMillan listed
Sung again: no
155
1996 Pilgrim Jesus
Words: Kevin Crossley-Holland
Music: Stephen Paulus
SSAATTBB with organ
Duration: 5 minutes
Publisher: European-American Music Corporation
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0
Sung again: no
1997 The Fayrfax Carol
Words: Anonymous, 16th century
Music: Thomas Adès
Publisher: Faber Duration c.5 minutes
SATB with divisions: optional organ
Max divisi SSSAATTTTBB
Duration: 5 minutes
Place in service: after 7th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0
Sung again: no
156
1998 Winter Solstice Carol
English words and music: Giles Swayne: refrain based on the Latin
Magnificat antiphon for Christmas Day
Publisher: Novello
SATB with divisi and flute
Duration: 4 minutes 30
Place in service: before 7th lesson
Patton and Taylor: 0 but other works by Swayne listed, the most
frequent being his Canticles
Sung again: no
1999 On Christmas Day to My Heart
Words: Clement Paman
Music: Richard Rodney Bennett
Anthem for SATB
Duration: 4 minutes
Publisher: Novello
Place in service: before 8th lesson
Patton and Taylor: other works by Bennett listed, including the
carol Susanni
Sung again: no
157
2000 The Three Kings
Words: Dorothy L. Sayers
Music: Jonathan Dove
Publisher: Peters
2 solo trebles plus SATB double choir a cappella
Duration: 4 minutes
Place in service: before 9th lesson
Patton and Taylor: lists other works by Dove
Has not been performed again at King’s, but is certainly in the
repertoire of a number of other choirs including York Minster
2001 Spring in Winter
Words: Christopher Smart
Music: John Woolrich
SATB a cappella
Publisher: Faber
Duration: 3 mins
Place in service: after 2nd lesson
Sung again: no
158
2002 Christmas Carol: The Angel Gabriel Descended to a Virgin
Words: 15th–17th century
Music: Robin Holloway
SATB (with divisi) and organ
Max divisi SSSSAATTBB
Duration: 6 minutes
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
Place in service: after 5th lesson
Sung again: no
2003 The Gleam
Words: Stephen Plaice
Music: Harrison Birtwistle
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
SATB choir
Duration: 6 minutes
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Sung again: no
159
2004 God would be born in thee
Words: Angelus Silesius
Music: Judith Bingham
SATB and organ
Publisher: Maecenas Music
Duration: 4 minutes 30
Place in service: after 3rd lesson
Patton and Taylor lists a number of other liturgical works by
Bingham, including a set of canticles also written for King’s
Sung again: no
2005 Away in a Manger
Words: 19th century
Music: John Tavener
Publisher: Chester Music
SSATBB
Duration: 3 minutes
Place in service: after 7th lesson
Patton and Taylor lists numerous works by Tavener
Sung again: no
160
2006 Misere’ nobis
Words: from a medieval English carol
Music: Mark-Anthony Turnage
SATB with divisi
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
Duration: 2 min 45 sec
Place in service: before 7th lesson
Sung again: no
Also appears in Choirbook for the Queen
2007 Noël (Now comes the dawn)
Words: Richard Watson Gilder
Music: Brett Dean
For mixed chorus SSATB/TrTrATB
Duration: 3 minutes 30
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
Place in service: after 3rd lesson
Sung again: no
161
2008 Mary
Words: Bertolt Brecht, trans. Michael Hamburger
Music: Dominic Muldowney
Duration: 4 minutes 30
Place in service: after 5th lesson
Unpublished: it has therefore not been possible to locate a copy of
the score
Sung again: no
2009 The Christ Child
Words: G.K. Chesterton
Music: Gabriel Jackson
Publisher: OUP X514 Duration: 3 minutes 30
SATB with divisions.
Place in service: after 7th lesson
Sung again: no
162
2010 Offerings they brought of gold (Kultaa, pyhää savua ja
mirhamia)
Words and Music: Einojuhani Rautavaara
Publisher: Boosey and Hawkes
SSAATTBB a cappella
Duration: 4 minutes 30
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Sung again: no
2011 Christmas hath a darkness (Christmas Eve)
Words: Christina Rossetti
Music: Tansy Davies
Publisher: Faber
SATB Unaccompanied
Duration: 6 minutes
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Sung again: no
163
2012 Ring Out, Wild Bells
Words: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Music: Carl Vine
For large choir SSAATTB
Publisher: Faber
Duration: 4 minutes
Place in service: before 5th lesson
Sung again: no
2013 Hear the voice of the Bard
Words: William Blake
Music: Thea Musgrave
TrATB Unaccompanied
Publisher: Novello
Duration: 3 minutes
Place in service: before 2nd lesson
Sung again: no
164
2014 De Virgine Maria
Words: 12th century Latin, trans. Ronald Knox
Music: Carl Rütti
SATB (with divisions) and organ
Duration: 3 minutes 30
Publisher: Novello NOV 295020
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Sung again: no
2015 The Flight
Words: George Szirtes
Music: Richard Causton
SATB (with divisions) unaccompanied
Publisher: OUP X612
Duration: 6 minutes
Place in service: after 8th lesson
Sung again: no
165
2016 This Endernight
Words: Anonymous, 15th century
Music: Michael Berkeley
SATB and organ
Publisher: OUP X672
Duration: 4 minutes 30
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Sung again: no
2017 Pwy sy’n gorwedd yn y Preseb? (Who is it that lies in the
manger?)
Words: Carol Eliseus (Elisha’s Carol): T. C. Davies
Music: Huw Watkins
SATB chorus
Publisher: Schott
Duration: 2 minutes
Place in service: after 6th lesson
Sung again: not applicable
166
Appendix 2
Composers of King’s commissions also represented in Choirbook for
the Queen:
Richard Rodney Bennett: Nowel (1986) and On Christmas Day to my Heart
(1999)/ These Three
Judith Bingham: God would be born in thee (2004)/Corpus Christi Carol
Diana Burrell: Christo paremus cantica (1993)/O Joyful Light
John Casken: A Gathering (1991)/In the Bleak Midwinter
Richard Causton: The Flight (2015)/Cradle Song
Peter Maxwell Davies: One Star, at Last (1984) /Advent Calendar
Jonathan Dove: The Three Kings (2000)/Vast Ocean of Light
Alexander Goehr: Carol of St Steven (1989)/Cities and Thrones and Powers
Jonathan Harvey: The Angels (1994)/The Royal Banners Forward Go
Robin Holloway: Christmas Carol (2002)/Psalm 121
Gabriel Jackson: The Christ Child (2009)/To Morning
James MacMillan: Seinte Marie moder milde (1995)/The Canticle of Zachariah
John Rutter: What sweeter music (1987)/I my Best-Beloved’s Am
Giles Swayne: Winter solstice carol (1998)/Ave Verum Corpus
John Tavener: Away in a manger (2005)/Take Him Earth for Cherishing
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Misere’ Nobis (2006- the same work in both)
Judith Weir: Illuminare Jerusalem (1985)/a blue true dream of sky
167
John Woolrich: Spring in Winter (2001)/Earth Grown Old
Summary: 18 of the Choirbook’s 44 anthems came from composers of King’s
commissions, and one is the same work
168
Appendix 3
Composers of King’s Commissions also represented in the Merton
Choirbook:
Harrison Birtwistle: Chorale Preludes (for unaccompanied choir)
Jonathan Dove: Te Deum
Gabriel Jackson: four pieces, including Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen
and The Passion of the Lord
James MacMillan: I will take you from the nations
John Tavener: O Adonai
Judith Weir: Ave Regina Coelorum
Summary: ten of 55 pieces came from composers of King’s commissions
169
Appendix 4: Outline of mediaeval order of Matins310 Invitatory with Psalm 94 (95) Hymn First Nocturn Three Psalms with Antiphons Three Lessons each followed by a responsory Second Nocturn Three Psalms with Antiphons Three Lessons each followed by a responsory Third Nocturn Three Psalms with Antiphons Three Lessons each followed by a responsory Te Deum (on Sundays and Feasts) Versicle Prayer Benedicamus Domino
310 Reproduced from Hoppin (1978), 100, table 7
170
Bibliography and list of resources:
Online
The Nine Lessons and Carols website
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/events/chapel-services/nine-lessons.html, which
provides a history of the service, gives details of carol commissions between
2007 and 2013 (including a podcast of the 2007 commission by Brett Dean),
and complete orders of service between 1997 and 2013.
http://www.recordedchurchmusic.org (formerly
http://www.inquiresandplaces.com/): an online archive of recorded music from
cathedrals and collegiate choirs. Also has its own YouTube channel,
youtube.com/c/archiveofrecordedchurchmusic
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com archive of historic hymn and carol
texts transcribed from hymnbooks and written collections, with midi files of
tunes.
https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/liturgy-in-4th-century-
jerusalem-the-travels-of-egeria/ A translation of the account of liturgical
practice in fourth century Jerusalem by the Galician nun Egeria (or Aetheria)
Archive material
King’s College Archive Centre holds significant collections of material relating
to the history of the chapel, the choir and the carol service. All files were
accessed at the Archive Centre on 11/12/2017. Particularly useful files
included:
KCA CSV/103- contains a complete set of orders of service for the Festival of
Nine Lessons and Carols from 1919-2015.
171
KCAR 8/3/21/13- contains letters and other documents pertaining to carol
services between 1986-1992, including correspondence with commissioned
composers.
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Nash, Nicholas, ‘A Right Prelude to Christmas’: A History of A Festival of Nine
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Phillips, W.J., Carols: Their origin, music and connection with mystery-plays (London:
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CD recordings
King’s College Cambridge 1954-1974/Ord and Willcocks, Decca 2016: historical
recordings, including carol services from 1954, 1958 and 1964 (29 CDs)
English Church Music/ Favourite Christmas Carols EMI/Testament, SBT 1121
(Choir of King’s College Cambridge/Ord, 1949-54)
On Christmas Day: New Carols from King’s EMI Classics 58070 2 (Choir of King’s
College, Cambridge/Cleobury, 2005)
178
Nine Lessons and Carols KGS 0001 (Choir of King’s College,
Cambridge/Cleobury, 2012)
100 Years of Nine Lessons and Carols KGS 0033 (Choir of King’s College,
Cambridge/Willcocks, Ledger, Cleobury, 2018) 2 CDs
Choirbook for the Queen Priory PRCD 1097 (BBC Singers/Cleobury, 2013)
The Complete Argo Recordings Decca 483 1252 (The Choir of St John’s College,
Cambridge/Guest 2017) 42 CDs
Allegri: Miserere Gimell 454 939-2 (Tallis Scholars/Phillips 1980)
Deo: Jonathan Harvey 1939-2012 Signum Records SIGCD456 (Choir of St
John’s College, Cambridge/Nethsingha, 2016)
Even You Song: Cheryl Frances-Hoad First Hand Records FHR61 (Choir of
Peterborough Cathedral/ Grahl
Journey into Light: Music for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and Candlemas Signum
Records SIGCD269 (Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge/Williams, 2012)
The Merton Collection: Merton College at 750 Delphian DCD34134 (Choir of
Merton College, Oxford/Phillips & Nicholas, 2013)
Vox Clara: Music of Gabriel Jackson (Choir of Truro Cathedral/Gray, 2016)
Oxford Choral Highlights 2017 AMUCDS17 (OUP/Chilcott 2017)
The Treasury of English Church Music 1100-1965 EMI Classics 84640 2 (5 CD
set, various choirs, 2011)
DVD recordings
The Story of King’s College Choir: ‘The Boast of King’s’, Alto/Prometheus
Productions ALDV 101 (Choir of King’s College, Cambridge/Ledger, 1980)
179
Carols from King’s, Opus Arte 0815 D (Choir of King’s College,
Cambridge/Cleobury, 2000)
Carols from King’s 60th Anniversary Edition, BBC KGS0013 (Choir of King’s
College, Cambridge/Cleobury, 2015)
The Story of Nine Lessons and Carols, Regent Records REGDVD004 (Choir of
Truro Cathedral/Gray, 2015)
Die Thomaner: Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, Accentus Music 216413
(Choir of the Thomanerkirche Leipzig/Biller, 2012)
TV recordings
60 Years of Carols at King’s (first broadcast on BBC2, 24/12/2014 and accessed
via http://www.inquiresandplaces.com/ on 24/10/2015)
Remastered broadcast of the 1954 service of Nine Lessons and Carols
accessed via http://www.recordedchurchmusic.org/broadcasts on 3/9/2016
King’s College Choir (Omnibus series 30 episode 14, BBC 1992), accessed via
YouTube 23/12/18
Scores
Carols for Choirs 1, eds. David Willcocks and Reginald Jacques (Oxford 1961)
and subsequent volumes 2-5
Choirbook for the Queen (Norwich: Canterbury Press 2011)
Christmas Carols New and Old, eds. H. R. Bramley and John Stainer (London:
Novello 1879)
180
Cleobury, Stephen, Christmas at King’s: Carols, Hymns and Seasonal Anthems for
Mixed Voices (Novello 2009)
Cowley Carol Book for Christmas, Easter and Ascensiontide, eds. G.R.Woodward
and Charles Wood (London: Mowbray 1921)
Oxford Book of Carols eds. Percy Dearmer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Martin
Shaw (Oxford: OUP 1928/1964)
Sir David Willcocks: A Celebration in Carols ed. John Rutter (Oxford: OUP 2014)
Individual scores of the King’s commissions are listed in Appendix 1, where
available. Two (Muldowney’s Mary and Birtwistle’s The Gleam) proved
impossible to locate.